The men roared. The waiter, standing by the counter, looked up from watching television.
“Used to shack up with a Indian woman in them days. Best goddamn woman in the North too! In the world. Kind as anything to me. Worked like a bastard and ate like a horse, I did. Shot me a moose twice every winter. My Indian woman acted as my guide all through the bush. Like say, for two months. November, December, January, February, and March we lived like a goddamn bear inside that shack we called our home. Me and my goddamn woman. Lived! I was a man then. Screwed like a bitch too. Them days I had my wife living in a town fifteen miles south. Porcupine. Lived like a man, I did!”
He whetted his tale with a large draught of beer and dried it with a smack of his lips. The others, waiting on his cue, raised their glasses to their lips; and as they settled down to listen again, they wiped their melting moustaches of beads and beer.
Alexander made them cry and he made them bawl with laughter and sympathy at his stories of the North. They laughed at his jokes about the women he had conquered like a real general, and they saw him as a general. He was a great man, a great goddamn buddy, they said in words and in looks. And they would always wait for him, should they arrive at the Selby before him; and they’d order just one beer each and nurse it until Alexander came through the door and into the darkened beverage room, already noisy before he entered, with the footsteps of sand on the floor and television soap operas which none of them watched except Joe, though they insisted it always be on.
He would come in like a soldier. And when he sat down, it seemed as if they had gathered their breaths and attention in one long intake. And they would wait until he was settled in his scraping chair. He told them, careening over the years of his life in the Canadian army, of his conquests, especially his personal conquests of women in Italy, in North Africa, in the Suez, and in Britain. But the woman he talked most about was his Indian woman from Timmins.
“One night my missus sneaked up on me! And, goddamn, fellas . . . well, I don’t have to tell you the rest!” They laughed like men would laugh at this kind of joke; and they blamed his wife, whom none of them knew, for being so goddamn thoughtless as to sneak up on him. A man like Alexander deserved a better wife, a more thoughtful wife, a wife who could understand such things, who could understand that she was living in the company and sleeping in the bed of a great man, a general.
“Women and wives can be clumsy sometimes,” Joe said.
Alexander looked at him with an expression which Joe did not understand. But inside, Alexander was saying to himself, Joe, you ain’t even a goddamn man, so how could you know? And then he relieved the tension in his cruel expression, and the tension around the table was relieved. He punched Joe playfully on his arm, and the men, like poker players after having diagnosed a bluff, relaxed and sipped their beer and smiled.
“Yeah, men, yeah,” Joe said. This time he was complimenting himself. He had had two wives. Both of them had divorced him for mental cruelty. He shrugged this memory out of his mind, remembered that Alexander still held the floor, and said, “That’s right, Lex. You’re right.”
Alexander felt good again. He had regained his prestige and their loyalty, and he had regained their attention without having to demand it. He thought he would play with them a while and tell them the story about the winter weekend he was lost in the bush in Timmins. But instead of telling them the truth—that he had cried like a child while his Indian woman left to go back to the camp for help—he decided to tell them it was he who had insisted she go back, while he lay in the snow for forty-five hours with his right leg frozen like an igloo. And of course they believed him. When he told them the story, they nodded and patted him on his back with their smiles and with a free round of beer. Every man bought him a beer. Alexander never bought anybody a round.
“My Indian woman fell sick on the way back to the camp, so they had to leave her behind. At the camp. Then they went and lost their way; those bastards lost their goddamn way. Took the bastards five hours more than I figured it would take them to find me. OPP even sent in a helicopter. And there I was in the goddamn snow, my right foot feeling like a ton o’ bricks, lifeless. And you know what? I’d just killed me a rabbit and was eating it raw when they arrived. And they said—”
“A rabbit?” Joe shouted, enjoying the story. “Hey, you hear that, fellas? A rabbit!”
The men were not the outdoor type. None of them had ever lived in the North. It was doubtful whether they knew the kind of animals to be found in the northern bush. But they laughed anyhow. It was a damn good story, they said. A damn fine story. And Alexander told it like a master, like a man, like a real man, which they all thought he was.
Now it was time to go home to his wife.
Alexander pushed his glass with some beer still in it, warm like plain tea, from in front of him. He made the first gesture to stand. And the others immediately scratched their chairs on the noisy sand on the floor and got up. They all began to talk about their wives being annoyed because supper had to be put into the oven to keep warm. But Joe, who wasn’t married now, merely commented upon what an enjoyable Friday afternoon it had been listening to Lex. If it wasn’t so late, and if they didn’t have wives, and if they hadn’t kept their wives waiting for supper and Friday-night shopping, he would invite Lex to return later in the evening and ask him to tell some more stories. But it was late now, they all agreed. Eight o’clock, and they hadn’t gone home to their wives with their wages.
“If you fellas were men, you won’t have to . . .” Alexander began, and he finished the rest of his opinion in a hoarse laugh filled with the pebbles of his deep voice and the bubbling suds of too much beer on an empty stomach.
“Yeah, yeah!” Joe chimed in. “Tell ’em, Lex; you tell ’em! If they was men . . . Christ, when I was a married man and my wife ever so much as opened her—”
Alexander scraped his heavy feet on the sand and straightened himself. “Well, men,” he said, putting an Export into his mouth, “thanks for your company.” Joe had raised his lighter to Lex’s cigarette. “S’long, fellas!!” He slapped each of them except Joe on his back, as he had done every evening when he was leaving, as he had seen army sergeants do on television. And then he left.
Joe caught up with him as he turned the corner to walk along Sherbourne, in the direction of the rooming houses with their dark foreboding hallways, where women sat on front steps with their blue-veined legs tucked into the crux of their cheap cotton dresses, white like their legs. Alexander hadn’t looked back for Joe. And Joe, mumbling in his words and in his walk, the beer making rubber of his legs, was chipping along a step behind Lex, as if his feet were spades scraping the sidewalk.
“You really told ’em back there, Lex. You really socked it to ’em. I like that one ’bout the time you got lost. And they couldn’t find you! And you stayed there, like a giant! Like a hero! Waiting for help. And all the time you was waiting, all the time you’re waiting in that damn cold, you was there, cool as a goddamn cucumber. Eating a raw rabbit!” He laughed. He was coughing. He started again to laugh and cough. And then he was coughing and trying to laugh, and all the time he was saying, “A rabbit! Imagine that! A goddamn raw rabbit!” And he would splutter into a coughing and laughing fit and touch Lex with his elbow, trying to do all these things and still keep up with Alexander’s pace. “A goddamn rabbit!” He spluttered some more. Saliva and stale beer touched his lips. He brushed it away with the back of his hand, and then he spat into the gutter. He nudged Lex with his elbow and said, “You know something, Lex? You wanna know something, old buddy?” Alexander continued walking, thinking of his wife waiting for him at home. “You know what, Lex? I wish I was like you. Really. No, really. I wish I was like you.”
Something was bothering Alexander. But the way he walked, a little in front of Joe, made Joe think that he was worrying him, that Lex didn’t want to talk any more, that he was probably thinking about very important things. And Joe thought he was not deferential
enough to Lex.
“Now, don’t get vex, Lex, old buddy. But I mean to say that, sitting down in that beer parlour, lis’ning to you talk the way you talked about the old days, it made me wish that my life was like your life, that I still had a woman at home, even a woman with a ring on her goddamn finger, even a wife, man! And I know that if I was just like you, I could be like you in that kind o’ thing, having a wife, just like you have a wife. I know that I would be the boss in the house, that I won’t make that mistake I make two times in the past and let her wear the goddamn pants. Not in my house. You understand me, Lex, buddy?”
Something wooden and staunch in Alexander’s movement was now taking Joe’s attention off what he wanted to say. Alexander seemed tense. He seemed to be angry that Joe was talking so much. To Joe it looked as if his steps were getting stiff . . .
It could have been the frostbitten leg tightening up, could have been the amount of beer he had drunk. But Lex can take his liquor, man. Lex can drink any man under the table! Nobody could take his liquor like Lex!
Alexander was moving away from him. And as Joe was thinking about Lex’s rugged character, his man’s rugged character, in that split second when his words and thoughts wrapped him inside Lex’s skin and he was Lex, that moment of acclaim and idolization . . . that same moment of approval was when Alexander shifted his weight off his right leg, off the sidewalk, and was heading for his home, a desolate brown brick building with a woman past middle age sitting on the front steps looking at the cars and people going home along Sherbourne. The woman was sitting with her greying shanks propped up to show the blueness of veins around her knees.
Joe had never walked him home before, and didn’t know he lived so close to the Selby Hotel. He had only sat with him and the other men in the dying-light-bulbed room where you couldn’t really see a man’s face, where you didn’t really know a man by complexion or features, both of which were dimmed in the light which the proprietor called “cozy.” And Joe had never walked so close, so long, beside Lex before. But today he had been carried away by some of the things, some of the drama of the strong man’s views contained in the story about the raw rabbit. Now he had dared to walk with Lex and confess that if no other man around the shining black table was impressed, he was.
Joe had come out of his dream of worship in time to see Alexander turn off the sidewalk and head for the woman sitting on the steps with her hands concealed in her lap.
The woman shifted her body ever so slightly. She was like a boxer moving her large hips over the cement of the steps to let Alexander pass.
Seeing his friend about to enter the house, Joe said, “Lex, I don’t mean to bug you, but I hope you didn’t mind me walking home with you like this, without you inviting me or anything, but I just want you to know that what you was telling me and the fellas back there in the beer parlour made a strange impression on me. I don’t know how to say this, Lex, buddy, things like this I can’t say too well, but I want to tell you that you made me feel like a man today. You did. You make me feel, well . . . that’s why I had to walk all the way over here with you, so that when you come to drink with the fellas tomorrow, even before you come, I want you to know you have a friend in me, and that I see a man in you, and that’s why—”
The fat woman on the steps turned her bulky body around and said, as if she was talking to the wind, “Ya better go in now before it’s too late, son. She been—”
“Look, I gotta go in, Joe,” Alexander said with an earnestness in his voice, a tinge of fear too, that Joe had never noticed before. “I wish we could talk now. You and me. As men. But maybe tomorrow, eh?” He looked scared. He would have said more but he knew he didn’t have the time. He looked like a man giving a final important farewell. “Maybe tomorrow, eh? Tomorrow?”
At that moment they could hear the marching of feet from down the dark hallway coming towards them. And the voice, as if it was just then being released from the throat, soft at first with the distance and the darkness of the house, and finally screaming, and the woman, a thin piece of a stick of a woman, was saying, “I thought I told you last night! Last night I said, make it the last time . . .”
But she did not finish her threat. Instead, she came down the two steps at Alexander. Joe was standing stupidly beside him, not knowing what to do, not knowing if there was anything to do. The woman came at Alexander and shouted, “Stanstill! Come, boy, stannup! Stand up!” in two distinct bullets.
And Alexander, Lex, the man who had waited so long in the snow, put his right hand dutifully on her shoulder while she bent down to his height.
She gripped his right leg. She pulled his trousers on that side of his body down, down, down, until it exposed a large canvas-type belt like those that sawmills use. And without another word she unbuckled some smaller belts and buckles. Alexander’s heel struck the floor. Joe smelled sausages cooking inside.
With his hand still on the hardness of his wife’s back, Alexander buried his face in the floor of linoleum, while the wife pulled the lifeless, eternally frostbitten and snow-devoured right leg out of the khaki trouser leg. Joe smelled the sausages inside and his eyes began to water. He was crying.
The woman sitting on the front steps did not even look back. She sat, and her relaxed fat back, flabby in the cotton dress, said that it had happened many times before.
Alexander’s wife pulled the other trouser leg off. She kicked the wooden leg inside the dark hallway. And she said to Alexander, standing in his one-legged underpants, “Move, bugger! Move! Now!” It was like four more bullets. Joe saw Lex stumble. Then he put out his right hand to touch the doorpost. And when he could feel the strength of the post, he lowered himself down to the floor, onto his hands. On one leg. In this posture he moved down into the further darkness of the dark house.
Joe did not want to see any more, and still he wanted to watch. He had turned his face away when Lex first bent down to reach the floor. And he was going to look back to see whether Lex resembled something, some animal he knew, something that Lex himself had talked about in many of his stories. But, instead, he walked back down the steps, past the woman watching the traffic along Sherbourne Street. She sensed when he was beside her, and without moving a muscle in her billowy body, she said, “Goodnight now.”
THE
MOTOR CAR
That Canadian thing you see laying down there in that hospital bed is Calvin woman, I mean was Calvin woman. Calvin wash motor cars back in Barbados till his back hurt and his belly burn, and when the pain stop in the body it start up fresh in his mind. Good thing Calvin was a God-faring man, ’cause if not he would have let go some real bad curse words that would have blow way the garage itself. But instead o’ talking to the customers ’bout the hard work, instead o’ talking to the boss ’bout the slave work he was making Calvin do in 1968 in these modern days, Calvin talk to God. Calvin didn’ know if God did really hear him, ’cause the more he talk to God every morning before he went to work on his old Raleigh green three-speed bicycle, and after work when his head hit that pillow, the more the work did get harder. One day Calvin take in with a ’bout o’ bad-feels, and the moment he come outta the fit or the trance, or the hellucinations, as his boss call it, right that very second Calvin swear blind to God that he leffing Barbados. One time. For good. First chance. Is only the governorship or the governor-generalship that could get Calvin to stay in Barbados. That is the kind o’ swearing he put ’pon God. And it ain’ really clear, even at this time, if God really understand the kind o’ message that Calvin put to him. But Calvin didn’ care. Calvin decide already. Calvin start to work hard, more harder than he ever work in his life, from the very day after he decide that he pulling outta Barbados. And is to Canada he coming. Now the problems start falling ’pon top o’ Calvin head like rainwater. First problem: he can’t get a Canadian visa. He seeing Canadian tourisses morning noon and night all ’bout his island, walking ’bout like if they own the blasted place, and if you don’t watch-out, they getting on as
if they want to own Calvin too. Calvin hit a low point ’o studyation. The work done now and he pack already, two big-big imitation leather valises; and he manage to buy the ticket too, although there is a regulation down there in the island that say a black man can’t buy a one-way ticket ’pon Air Canada saving he have a job and a roof to come to in Canada, or he have family here, or some kind o’ support, cause Trudeau get vex-vex as hell ’bout supporting the boys when they come up here and can’t find proper ’ployment. Calvin walking ’bout Bridgetown the capital all day telling people he leffing next week for Canada. Next week come, and he still walking ’bout Bridgetown. He ain’ pull out in trute, yuh; he like he ain’ pulling out at all, man; that is what the boys was beginning to whizzy-whizzy. They start laughing at Calvin behind his back, and Calvin grinning and telling them, “Gorblummuh, you laugh! Laugh! He who laugh last, laugh . . .” And for purpose, he won’t finish the proverb at all; he only ordering a next round o’ steam for his friends, but his mind focus-on ’pon a new shining motor car that he going buy up in Canada before he even living there a year. He done make up his mind that he going work at two car-wash places, and if the Lord hear his prayers, and treat he nice, he going hustle a next job on top o’ them two too.
Well, the more the boys laugh, the more Calvin decide with a bad-mind that he going buy a brand-new Chevy, perhaps even a custom-build Galaxie.
And then, all of a sudden, one night when the fellas drink three free-round o’ rum offa Calvin, Calvin really start to laugh. He push he hand inside his pocket, and he pull out a thing that look real important and official, and all he say is, “I taking off at nine in the morning.” Calvin then throw a new-brand twenty-dollar bill ’pon Marcus rum-shop counter, and the fellas gone wild, be-Christ, ’cause is now real rum-drinking going begin. Calvin stand up like a man. Every one that his best friend Willy fire, Calvin fire one too. Willy, who didn’ lick he mouth too much ’gainst Calvin going-’way, when he reach the fifth straight Mount Gay, Calvin was right there with him. Is rum for rum. Drink for drink. They start eating raw salt fish, and Calvin iamming the codfish as if he catch it himself off the Grand Banks o’ Newfoundland in the same Canada that he heading out to. The fellas eat off all o’ Marcus bad half-rotten salt fish, and then start-on ’pon a tin o’ corn beef and raw onions, and you would have think that Calvin had been on a real religious fast during the time he was worrying ’bout the Canadian visa. “I going tell you fellas something,” Willy say, for no conceivable reason at all, ’cause they was just then telling Calvin that he ain’ going see no good cricket when he get up in that cold ungodly place call Canada. “I going tell you fellas something now,” Willy say, after he clear his throat for effect, and to make the fellas stop drinking and eating and listen to him. “Godblummuh! Calvin is the most luckiest one o’ we, yuh! Calvin lucky-lucky-lucky as shite!” He say the last three lucky like if they was one word. Anyhow, he went on, “Calvin is a king to we!” Now, nobody ain’ know what the arse Willy trying to say, cause Willy is a man who does try to talk big and does talk a lot o’ shite in the bargain. But this time, solemn occasion as it be, the fellas decide to give Willy a listen. “We lis’ning, man, so talk yuh talk. We lis’ning.” Willy take a long pull ’pon the rum bottle, and he stuff ’bout a half-pound o’ corn beef inside his mouth, with the biscuits flying ’bout the place like big drops o’ spit. “You see that salt fish that we just put ’way? Well, it make up in Canada. Tha’s where Calvin here going. Now understand this when I say it. I only say that to say this. Comprehend? The salt fish that we does get down here, send-down by Canada, is the same quality o’ salt fish that they uses to send down here to feed we when we was slaves. It smell stink. You could tell when a woman cooking salt fish. We even invent a term to go ’long with this kind o’ salt fish and this kind o’ stinkingness. We does say to a person who uses profine words, ‘Yuh mouth smell like a fucking salt-fish barrel.’ Unnerstand? I going to lay a bet ’pon any one o’ you bastards in here now, drinking this rum. I going wager five dollars ’gainst a quarter that the brand o’ salt fish Calvin going get to buy and eat up in that place call Canada is a more better quality o’ salt fish. It bound to be, ’cause that is where it produce. And if you ever study Marx, you would understand the kind o’ socialism I talking ’bout.” Nobody ain’ answer Willy for a time, all they do is laugh. “Laugh! Laugh!” Willy say with scorn, “’Cause godblindme . . . !” And then Calvin say, like if he didn’ really want to say the words at-all, “Be-Jesus Christ, when you see me leff this blasted backwards place call Barbados, that is the last time I eating salt fish. I eating steaks!”
The Austin Clarke Library Page 68