The first time he’d strolled into the bar in Grande Prairie and saw me prowling about slinging beer, he’d gotten quite the start—like he thought I was chasing him. I’d fretted about that very thing as I readied for the big move, but then put it aside. It was a grand opportunity Myrah had happened upon in the local newspaper—a bar in Grande Prairie, Alberta, looking for Newfoundland waitresses, paying triple the wages offered around town and quadruple the tips. With my degree filling one pocket and student loans depleting the other, I was soon flying into the sunset with Myrah.
I knew from Mother that Grande Prairie was where Ben and Trapp were both working, and no doubt I looked to see them each time I strapped on my change apron and faced the loud, crowded barroom. But it had been three years since I last saw Ben, a good stretch of time, and the sour memory of waiting in a cafeteria for a supper that was never dished served more to breach than bridge. The kick in my heart, then, upon first spotting him looming through the barroom door was as much a surprise to me as the sight of my lean figure toting a serving tray and slinging beer was to him.
His curls were cropped close to his head and his beard shorn, revealing a fixed jaw and a graven face. His eyes, I was relieved to note—for his mother’s sake, not mine—weren’t wasted and hidden behind shades, and were the same clear grey as when he’d slouched about the wharf, scrutinizing my knees and criticizing my crooked nose. His stunned look upon seeing me gave way to confusion as I approached. Then a kind of nervousness flushed his face and he backed away as though he might flee.
“Hey, look who’s here,” I said airily, wiping off a table and pulling out a chair. “Want a beer? You looks awfully sober.”
“What’re you doing here?” No smile, no greeting nod.
“Oh, change of scenery. Bit of shopping. How’s your sidekick?” I moved to the next table, stacking empties on my tray, trying not to feel his eyes appraising me with such an odd look of fear, as though he wished me an apparition that might vanish upon touch.
“Was that a no—to the beer?” I asked. “Perhaps an Irish coffee?” Balancing the loaded tray on one hand and plugging two more empties onto my thumb and forefinger, I faced him in my old taunting manner.
He smiled a curious, sad smile and shook his head. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. “But—I gotta go. Looking for someone.”
“Sure, next time.” I walked away from him and laid the tray of empties on the bar, my arms trembling.
The next day he was back, sitting on a barstool with the same graven look.
“Myrah found this great ad in the paper in St. John’s—just what I was looking for—a chance to pay off the loans, save some money for grad school,” I offered, wiping down the bar before him.
“So, where’s the roomie now?” he asked.
“Sinuses. Couldn’t handle the bar—too smoky. She’s working across town in a hotel restaurant—forgets the name— up on the main road coming through town.”
“And you’ve found a place?”
“Basement apartment, one room—I lost the draw and got the sofa. Lucky to have it, I guess—everybody sleeping in trucks, what with the oil boom and housing shortage. Guess you know all that, eh?” I smiled and went off with my tray, picking up empties and taking orders.
I wasn’t the silly, flighty schoolgirl anymore, but it unnerved me whenever Ben was in the bar. Brought back all those tender memories of girlhood love and the terrible hurt when he’d just taken off like that. It was his fourth or fifth time back, sitting on the barstool, that I realized there was something wrong with Ben’s face; that he wasn’t simply being reserved, or worried by my appearance on his turf, for even worry spirited a face. And Ben’s face was without spirit—like Kyle’s the night outside the bar when he’d known Chris was leaving for the oil rigs.
I noted too that he was staying for longer periods of time, yet always near the centre of the bar, which, amongst the constant parade of patrons assailing me for beer or whisky or change for the cigarette machine, reduced our conversations to snatches. And never did he speak of himself, diverting all talk to Chris, or home, or the dump of snow that had just whitened the streets of Grande Prairie.
Sometimes, as I swerved my way around the room and caught sight of him hunched over his beer, I felt a huge sense of loneliness about him—not the loneliness one feels for a friend, a lover, or family, but for himself, the laughing free spirit who drew cats for old women and gulped back spiked coffee and hung out in low-life bars that supposedly inspired Paul McCartney. I burned to plop my tray before him, demanding why—why the hell he was working the rigs with only five credits left for an engineering degree, why the hell he wasn’t visiting his poor, bewildered mother, where was Trapp, why the graven image, and more important than all of that—why did he leave me waiting for a dinner that was never served?
But I couldn’t do it. He felt too much like a bird that had clipped its own wings, and at the slightest questioning he’d be hopping to another perch. I didn’t want that, for I felt it was me, and some sense of who he used to be, that he was needing, not the bar itself. And either injustices grow smaller with the passage of time or mine was a forgiving nature, but I no longer felt angry at Ben. And worse, as I declared to the tutting Myrah one morning over breakfast, I no longer wanted to feel angry at Ben.
Once, on a snappish winter’s day, with the late-afternoon sun glitzing the snow-packed sidewalks, he came up to me as I was leaving the bar and invited me to dinner. His eyes, as we sat across from each other at a wooden booth in a steak house, were sheepish with guilt, and I knew he was remembering his last invitation, and the No-Show. Yet he said nothing. And it was this, his continuing silence about anything of the past few years and the sadness in his eyes, that stole across the table like a long shadow, touching me with a hint of foreboding.
So I was surprised when, after we’d washed down the last of our steak with beer, he asked about my graduation, ordered an expensive bottle of wine for a toast, and with his eyes crinkling a little into their old, taunting manner, ribbed me about the airiness of philosophers and how he’d have to put rocks in my pockets to keep me from floating with all them airy thoughts inflating my head.
Folding my arms onto the table, I lazed into this unexpected burst of warmth like a turtle on a sunny rock. “Let’s hear some of your thoughts,” I said boldly. “Loosen the lid on that trunk of yours. Show me something from the past few years.”
It took a minute for him to remember that evening in the student centre when I’d taunted him about the trunk he’d doodled, its lid tightly shut and no telling clothes trailing outside to hint at the owner’s story. When he did remember, his smile faded.
“Rocks,” he said simply. “Full of rocks. Sink a boat.” He drank the rest of his wine and laid down his glass, letting his hand rest on the table beside mine. I examined the broad, hairy width of it, ridged with veins, his knuckles chafed by weather, and resisted the urge to trace my finger along that wormy bluish vein. I looked up. He was smiling that sad smile again, his eyes filled with more uncertainty than when he’d drifted around campus with enlarged pupils, patting the rumps of dogs that weren’t there. At least then I knew his hallucination. This new incertitude baffled me. And I hated that sad smile; it reminded me of Father’s the last time he motored from the shores of Cooney Arm, looking back upon his stage, his flakes, and all those things reverent to his heart that he’d been forced to leave.
“Heard from Pabs? Still weaving with his pencil I hope?”
I smiled. “Yeah, he’s always at it.”
“Yeah, he’s amazing.”
“Thought you were good, too.”
“I was just playing around.”
“But still, you were good.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the one grading me bad? Exact. Too exact. Weren’t they your words? Destroyed me, I think.” He shook his head. “Man, he can draw. I remember studying him—those times we hung on that wharf, sketching. I was always trying to fig
ure him out, how he saw things, drew things. It was like if I could figure it, I could have it too.” His tone turned pensive. “Think my whole life’s been like that, trailing behind others, taking on their ways.”
I looked at him with surprise. “How do you get that? You were always the main attraction.”
His face softened onto mine. “Only you saw it that way,” he said gently. “Actually, it was the pot I kept feeding everyone— for a price—that was the main attraction. Helped pay the bills, but—” He pulled a face. “Let’s stick with you, more interesting. Ran across you in the library once, going through Descartes’s meditations like a miner with a pick. What got you onto philosophy, anyway?”
He was pulling bills out of his pocket and laying them on the table for the waitress. I picked up my gloves, reluctant for the evening to end. “Sorry about rushing,” he said apologetically, “but it’s a two-hour drive to the rig.”
“You’re driving tonight?”
“Yep. Philosophy. You were telling me, why philosophy.”
“I dunno. Curious to know where babies come from— before the womb and after death. What about your engineering—did you—did you ever finish? And what about Trapp—you never mention him.”
“Trapp’s been better. And I did finish the engineering. So— where babies come from—before the womb. What got you thinking about that?”
We’d left the restaurant and now he was taking my arm and leading me down the icy sidewalk. He was a head taller than me, but it felt like more than that as he crunched a path in his chunky, steel-toed boots through the banked snow towards my car. Holding on to his arm, I told the story I always told whenever I was asked: about Mother’s three little dears sleeping in the graveyard, and how I’d thought them romantic creatures, like angels, but how that notion was dispelled when I played dead myself once, nearly frightening poor Mother to death.
Ben listened quietly, thin flakes of snow glinting on his dark curls as we paused within the umbrella of light thrown off by a street lamp.
“And that’s it really,” I ended. Then, prodded by his silence, I added a few other things, things I hadn’t told anyone, about how I understood—in that moment of Mother’s fright—what Gran’s flowery language had tried to tell me: that the little dears had been real babies with fingers and eyes like mine, buried now beneath the ground in coffins that held nothing of the flowers and sunshine that covered them but were worm-ridden and dark and cold.
“Despite Gran’s assurances,” I went on, “that the dead rise from their graves and take on the wings of angels, I was never so sure. Why, then, was my mother still planting flowers and sitting by the graves if there was nothing down there? Truly, it was the deepest of mysteries,” I concluded with a flourish of hands. “And it still is. Don’t you think?”
He dug his hands in his pockets, a smile twisting his mouth. “And have you figured it?”
“Lord, no. It can never be figured—it’s the figuring part itself that intrigues me, and the numerous other mysteries it leads me to.’Course, you’re the one who likes everything defined— didn’t you say that once?”
We were standing quite close now, the snow thickening on his hair, melting on his mouth.
“Sylvie, I’ve gotten caught in something,” he said abruptly.
“Oh lord, he’s married.” I was only half joking.
He shook his head. “That would be simple,” he said dismally. “It’s just not something I can talk about right now. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, but nodded anyway. Moving past me, he used his forearm to swipe the mantle of snow off my windshield. Then he brushed the covering of snow off my shoulders and quickly, gently, pressed his mouth against my cheek. “I won’t be around for a while,” he said lowly. “Got some things to do. Perhaps we can have a drink after—a long drink, eh? Where’s your keys— get inside. Start your car—make sure she starts.”
He waited for a moment as I started the car, swiping snow from the back windshield, and then he was bounding back to the sidewalk, watching as I crunched away from the curb.
It was a few weeks later, late evening, before I saw him again. I was walking along the same sidewalk to my car. It was bitterly cold, the air white with ice crystals. Ben was walking towards a nightclub, his bared head hunched into his shoulders, the tips of his hair frosty grey. Clinging to his arm was Trapp, his feet slipping and sliding beneath him as he grinned like an irate child. Ben stopped upon seeing me, Trapp colliding against him. I stared at Trapp, a wool cap pulled down over his ears, his face bone-white beneath the neon lights of the club, ruffs of sideburns and chin hair patching his face. He slipped when he saw me, and was saved from a headlong flight by Ben holding tight to his arm, steadying him.
“Hey, how you doing?” I asked, looking at them both.
It was Trapp who responded. “Dandy, just gawd-damned dandy, and how’s Miss Sylvie?” he leered, straining to keep going.
I was taken aback, his manner highly offensive, even for Trapp.
“It’s his birthday,” said Ben, giving me an apologetic smile. “Been working straight through for a while now. Might say he’s broke out.”
I watched as he gave Trapp a push, sending him staggering ahead, and tried not to show Ben that I knew his lie. Nobody worked the rigs with facial hair, given the threat of sour gas and the need for close-fitting oxygen masks.
“Where you off to?” asked Ben. “Wanna join us for a beer?”
“Think I’ll pass,” I replied, watching Trapp tumbling to the sidewalk. A couple came out of the nightclub, stepping distastefully around Trapp, who kept slipping onto his knees as he tried to get up. Ben was instantly beside him, helping him to his feet. He looked back to me with a quiet smile, his eyes appealing for some sort of understanding as Trapp remained leaning against him for support. To spare him further effort I called out good night and went in search of my car. I looked back once, peering closer to see Ben wiping spit or puke off Trapp’s mouth with his coat sleeve, no different from a father wiping his youngster’s mouth clean of ice cream.
Throughout the rest of the week I kept seeing them, Ben dragging the staggering Trapp up one street and down another, in and out of the dance bars and pool halls. I kept a clear path, and was more embarrassed for Ben when Trapp spotted me leaving a drugstore once and heckled, “Well, if it ain’t little Miss Sylvie. How’s she going, little Miss Sylvie?”
“His birthday,” Ben mouthed apologetically, shoving Trapp’s face into the sleeve of his coat. I walked past with a flash of irritation, wondering about the poor bitch of a mother whose youngster must’ve laid half in, half out of the womb for five days straight in order to command a five-day birthday.
Ben caught up with me, his hand tightening around my arm.
“He’s—coming down hard. Sylvie—”
“What, off drugs?” I faced Ben. “What the hell’s going on with him—with you? And why the hell is he so—so disdainful—of me?”
“He’s not, he’s just a bit screwed up right now, he’ll get over it.”
“Get over what?”
Ben stared at me, his face closed up like a clam shell. “I won’t be around for a while,” he said quietly. “Going to a different rig in the morning. Be back in a few weeks. Perhaps we can have that drink.” He touched my arm and smiled, a deep, tender smile that would’ve sent my heart skipping beats like a faulty piston in days of yore.
“You keep in touch, buddy,” I said, and patting his hand reassuringly, carried on down the street “like I hadn’t a care in the world,” I said to Myrah later, making up my bed on the sofa, “and no more I don’t—he’s never offered anything but friendship, and I’m always drooling at the mouth—god, I’m sick to death of mooning over Ben Rice—been mooning over him all my life, it feels like.”
“He’s a tease,” cut in Myrah.
“Ohh, god, no, he’s not—he’s nothing, he’s a friend—a friend who likes me a lot and deserves more than a mooning, foolish schoolgirl every time
he tips his hat or tosses a smile— that’s how he is with everybody, really friendly, and it’s just this stupid part of me that keeps thinking, Ahh, it’s him, it’s him, he’s the one who’s gonna save me—eh, save me from what, you might ask, good question.” I looked at Myrah, who was no longer listening, her curly head thrown back in the rickety armchair we’d found on the street, her eyes dazed into the shape of hearts.
“Well sir, she’s mooning,” I exclaimed.
And she was—she’d been in a state of bliss for weeks over some guy from back home who was part of a mud crew for the rigs and was spending his time off in the hotel. He swore Myrah was a Sandy Olsson lookalike, his favourite dancing girl from Grease. I suffered through that movie time and again whilst Myrah studied the facial tics and head tilts and hairstyles of the actress, adopting them for her own so’s to enthrall the already smitten mud-man who was beginning to hint about engagement rings. Which started my heart skipping like a faulty piston again each time some dark, curly-headed fellow entered the bar, reminding me of Ben.
“Poor bastard, good thing he don’t show up,” I whispered to Myrah one night during a love scene between Sandy and Danny Zuko, “for I’d probably be at his ankles like a Chihuahua, yapping on and on about all the grand reasons why I study philosophy, hoping to impress him—gawd, why do I keep blistering over that poor bastard?”
“Ahh, he’s just a fixture in your head is all,” said Myrah, “a habit, kick it, and why don’t you have a boyfriend? Never known you to have more than three or four dates with the one fellow.”
“I dunno—after a few dates, everything just wears off.”
“Then it can’t be love.”
“Whatever that is. Would probably wear off with Ben, too. Who knows. Perhaps it’s only fantasy I like—gawd, there’s a thought.”
And indeed it was a troubling thought, for looking back, the romantic prospects I’d met during the past years never felt right—least not the way I’d imagined love, or even lust, might feel. Mostly what I felt was a huge want in my heart that was never satiated, no matter how cute or clever the man. And the want was burning big these days, triggered no doubt by the reappearance of the sooty-eyed Ben. And why not, I rationalized. As the first recipient of my misguided heart, it made perfect sense that he’d always be a Pavlovian bell.
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