Ten Days in Summer

by Susan Calder

  Yeah, right. She put on sunglasses. The balcony railing jiggled at her touch. Not trusting the rotted wood, she leaned forward enough to see the lawn mowers and barbecues on Caspar’s porch area.

  “Did you go down to your uncle’s often?”

  “I couldn’t stand being so closed in.”

  “Why did he—?”

  “Collect crap? Who knows?”

  Johnny placed the pizza box and his beer on a glass café table with a star-shaped crack. Beside it a rattan chair backed against the living room picture window. The appliances inside the apartment pressed against the glass like they were screaming to get out. This deck was as large as Paula’s living room. Johnny dragged a wooden chair from the far end toward her. She was glad they weren’t eating at the bar table next to the shaky railing, despite the stunning vista they’d have from the high plastic chairs. Johnny had evaded her question about the frequency of his visits to Caspar’s place.

  “Where did your uncle get all his stuff?”

  “Garage sales mainly. Some came from neighbours unloading their broken-down trash. He meant to repair it all but never did.”

  “How come?”

  “That’s how he is. Was. Let’s open those beers while they’re still cold.”

  Johnny kicked up his legs. He landed on the wooden chair without appearing to have hurt his rear end. A show-off, but impressive acrobatics. He propped his legs on the footrest. Paula jostled the rattan chair to test its sturdiness. It felt solid although the seat pad was soiled a suspicious dark red. Above them was an awning pocked with holes.

  Johnny popped the lid of his beer can. “If you need your pizza hot, we can zap it on the barbecue.”

  “Which one?” Three barbecues stood at the far end of the deck.

  “Preferably the one that works.”

  A lounge chair on this closer end had a sleeping bag bunched on top.

  ‘You’re serious about sleeping outside,” Paula said.

  “I will tonight, even if it’s freezing cold. Less smoky.”

  “You and your mother won’t mind living with the smell?”

  “After a few minutes, you don’t notice it.”

  “Were you sleeping out here the night of the fire?” she asked.

  “That’s why I didn’t hear the firemen breaking in.”

  “Didn’t the siren noise wake you up?”

  “You hear sirens all the time in the city,” he said. “I tune them out.”

  “What about smoke detectors?”

  “We have a half dozen or so. No working batteries, though.”

  She got her phone from her purse and jotted a reminder about the damaged front door. “Would you mind if I record our talk?”

  “As long as you don’t post it on the Internet.”

  She moved the pizza box aside to make space for the phone.

  “Will you be camping out downtown tonight?” Johnny asked. “To claim a front row seat at the parade?”

  “I go for a spot at the end of the route and merely arrive at the crack of dawn.”

  “Near the Calgary Tower?”

  “A block west.” She started the recording and asked him to describe the evening of the fire.

  “I’d gone out drinking with friends,” he said. “Got to bed around midnight, one o’clock at the latest.”

  That was about an hour before the fire began, one week ago. She took a slice of pizza blanketed with mushrooms, green peppers and meats, greasy and already cool. Johnny told her he remembered dreaming he was riding through the desert, came across a large, red rock and wondered how he had gotten to Sedona. The rock started pulsing heat and light and emitting shrill sounds. Still in the dream, he smelled smoke and heard banging and louder sirens. It hit him the fire was real. He stumbled through the alcove to the front door, which jerked open. That was when he had faced the firefighter wielding a sledge.

  “The moron dropped the weapon, grabbed me and hauled me outside.”

  From his shirt pocket Johnny took out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She shook her head. Even back when she smoked, in her twenties, she didn’t combine it with eating. Johnny lit a match on the sole of his cowboy boot. He said the firefighter asked him if anyone else was inside. Johnny replied that his mother was in the front bedroom. He’d forgotten she was on her overnight hike until the firefighter returned and said he couldn’t find her anywhere. He asked about pets and valuables they wanted rescued in case the fire spread. Johnny couldn’t think of one item of worth. All his mother cared about was her camping and hiking gear, which she had taken with her. By then, neighbours had gathered on the street. Since the firefighters kept him off their property, Johnny cut through the neighbour’s yard to the lane and saw an ambulance drive off. A firefighter told him his uncle had been found unconscious and taken out on stretcher.

  Johnny inhaled the cigarette and blew three smoke rings. Paula had always wondered how to do that but didn’t want to derail their conversation. Like most people, he wanted to share his profound experience. He hadn’t touched the pizza yet.

  “I climbed the board fence from the neighbour’s yard,” he said. “And watched the flames die in Uncle Caspar’s side windows.”

  Since the building would survive and no one would tell him what was happening with his uncle, he jumped in his truck and drove to Foothills Hospital, assuming they had taken Caspar there. Emergency confirmed a burn victim was brought in. They sent Johnny to the burn unit, which directed him to another department.

  “I got the runaround to fifteen different floors until I found him “Guess where?” Johnny stared at her. “The burn unit. Jackasses. The guys who brought him in didn’t know Caspar’s name and registered him as ‘unknown.’ The woman at the desk told me, ‘Oh yeah, I thought that might be him.’ So why didn’t the stupid cow tell me that at the start?’”

  Paula shrugged a nonreply, hating his ‘cow’ put-down for women.

  “I waited around for hours,” Johnny continued. “Finally, they let me see him. He was hooked up to machines and completely out. His bushy eyebrows made him look fierce, even in his unconscious state, like he was angry. In life, he took things easy. It hit me this was a situation where I should be calling someone. But who? My mother’s cellphone was out of range on whatever-the-fuck mountain she was on. The only other person I could think of was my sister. Cynthia blasted me for waking her up.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around five, I guess. Cynthia asked if Uncle Caspar was alive. He’s hanging on, I said. She says she has to take her daughter to dance camp at eight and tells me she’ll swing by on her way back. I’m like, ‘What if he dies before then?’ She says, ‘Then there’s nothing I can do.’ I ask, “What if he wakes up and dies?’ She says the dance camp is near the hospital; she won’t be later than eight-fifteen.” Johnny paused to drag on his cigarette. “She arrives a half-hour after that because she’s Cynthia and always having to cram something in before getting to where she’s supposed to be. Have you talked to her?”

  “Not yet.”

  Johnny dropped his cigarette butt to the deck floor and ground it with his boot. “Uncle Caspar died while Cynthia and I were on the phone. She wouldn’t have arrived in time anyway, and what was the point? To remember him looking so angry and seeing him die?” Johnny’s voice trembled.

  Paula’s throat grew tight.

  “They tell me it was the smoke that got him,” Johnny said. “The fire wasn’t that huge.”

  “Small amounts of smoke can kill, especially if it comes from plastics or hydrocarbons.”

  “It made me think of how I’ll go.” Johnny leaned back to drain his beer. “Might be heart or lungs or cancer, or I’ll be knifed in a brawl. I might be angry at death or accepting, terrified or calm, but in one way or another I’ll die like him.” He stared into his can. “Alone.”

  Paula’s skin prickled until she wondered if he had spoken for dramatic effect. Or was that being too suspicious? Was Johnny’s grief genuine,
or had he reeled off this story to suck her in? He took out another cigarette, put it back and opened another can of beer.

  “Were you close to your uncle?” she asked.

  “What does that mean?” Johnny pulled out a cigarette.

  “Did you and he talk?”

  “We’d jabber about nothing when he came up to get his mail and collect the newspaper Ma passed along to him.”

  “So you saw him daily?”

  “He’d usually come up mornings. Who’s awake then?”

  Paula glanced at the lounge chair and sleeping bag. “Wouldn’t the sun wake you up early out here?”

  “You’re quick.” Johnny drew on his cigarette. “I crawl indoors to finish sleeping.”

  As a non–morning person, Paula agreed that made sense.

  “Uncle Caspar and I used to sit on the deck. Not this one, the deck below.” Johnny tapped his boot on the floor. “Living with your mother for a few months a year is okay, but you want to escape sometimes.”

  “What did you and he talk about?”

  “The weather…football…Just two fellows relaxing and smoking. This was all last summer and the ones before. We didn’t get around to it this year. Another thing to regret.”

  “What was the first thing?”

  Johnny guzzled some beer.

  “When did you arrive in Calgary from Arizona?”

  “A month ago, give or take.” Johnny leaped off the chair. “Mind if I go use the can? Beer runs right through me.” He mashed his cigarette into the pizza box top and left the smouldering butt on the cardboard.

  Paula stopped herself from remarking that his uncle had died in a fire believed caused by a lit cigarette. She picked up her phone, turned off the recording and followed him into the alcove.

  “What’s the plan for these clothes and furs?” she asked.

  “Ma’s getting them appraised. She thought of doing it this spring but got busy with hiking.

  “She’s really into the back-country stuff?” Paula said. “How old is she?”

  “Seventy and in better shape than me these days.” Johnny paused at the bathroom door. “Do you want a turn? Ladies first.”

  Toothbrushes, cups and shaving gear littered the small bathroom counter. Grey hairs coiled in the sink. Florence’s or Johnny’s? For all Paula knew, he could be bald under that cowboy hat. An oddity on the counter, given the rest of the Becker house, was a mustache kit with a tiny brush, comb and scissors for grooming Johnny’s mustache. Paula judged the towels too grubby to wipe her hands on. She dried them on her skirt. Food particles spotted the mirror. Evidently Johnny and/or Florence flossed but didn’t often clean this room. The toilet flush rumbled on. Paula jiggled the handle and lifted the tank lid to untangle the rusty chain. She took a quick peek in the medicine cabinet, one of its door screws missing. Band-Aids, Aspirin, foot cream. Nothing unusual.

  “Cool mustache kit,” she said to Johnny when she came out.

  “My fortieth-birthday gift from Uncle Caspar. He got it at a garage sale and was tickled by his find. I don’t really need it, but….” He stroked his trim mustache.

  While he was in the bathroom, she studied the baby gear jammed in the adjacent room. The cribs, walkers and playpens probably violated today’s safety regulations. Why not throw them out? Several English-style prams balanced on top of it all. No breeze flowed from the open window, but Johnny was right that after the first few sniffs inside you didn’t notice the smoke.

  “When she first moved in.” Johnny’s voice from behind made her start. “Ma argued with Uncle Caspar to clean this up. But you get used to the junk after a while.”

  “When did your mother move in?”

  “She more or less took over when my grandmother died six or seven years ago.”

  “Your uncle carted up all of this since then?”

  “It started earlier, when Oma and Opa were too out of it to resist. I don’t know if they would have anyway. Ma says they spoiled him. He was their baby.”

  “He had one older brother,” Paula recalled from the reports.

  “My dad.”

  “I gather Florence, your mother, was your father’s first wife.”

  Johnny rubbed his forehead under the hat brim. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m done. Last night was a late one drinking with my buddy. What’s the next step about making the insurance claim?”

  “I’ll need to verify coverage and will require a copy of your uncle’s will leaving you and your siblings the property.”

  “I don’t have that crap,” he said. “Try my sister.”

  “I understand your brother is in Ontario.”

  “He was. I learned this week he came back without me knowing.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime before the fire.”

  “Do you have his phone number?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  It took him five minutes to find his mother’s address book behind the spice bottles. “Do you want Cynthia’s, too?”

  “You don’t have them logged in your cell?” Paula asked.

  “I’m not into that. Who wants to be accessible all the time?”

  Paula saved Brendan’s and Cynthia’s numbers in her cellphone. She had many more questions for Johnny, but he had called the interview to a close and she wanted to get home to make sure her mother was settled comfortably into bed. They had an early start tomorrow.

  “When is Florence moving back in?” she asked on their way down the hallway.

  “When she thinks the apartment is habitable.”

  Paula glanced at a stack of papers on the microwaves. The top sheet was a computer printout with the title ‘Germany in the Great Depression.’ Johnny’s reference to his grandparents as Oma and Opa suggested they were German immigrants. Paula’s gaze moved up to a pair of black-and-white photos she hadn’t noticed on the wall when they came in. In one frame a female figure skater glided across the ice, her leg raised straight behind. The other photo captured a male skater in a sit spin.

  “Recognize that handsome chap?” Johnny said.

  She leaned over the microwaves and papers for a closer look. The young man was dressed in sleek pants and a flowing shirt dotted with sequins.

  “This isn’t you?” She scrutinized Johnny’s narrow face under the cowboy hat.

  He grinned. Small, even teeth. White. He likely did floss.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a figure skater,” she said.

  He raised his arms in a pose that was amazingly graceful. His leap onto the deck chair had shown agility.

  “The girl’s Cynthia,” he said. “Ma got us into skating when we were kids. With her push we made it all the way to the Olympic trials. But Cynthia fell during her short program and lost her confidence for the long. I choked and reduced a triple Lutz to a double. Game over.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paula said. “I know how much work it must have taken to get as far as you did. That’s a huge achievement.”

  On the other side of Florence’s bedroom door was a colour portrait of two seated teenagers, the boy holding a baby in his lap. Paula sniffed Johnny’s cigarette and beer odour as he leaned over her shoulder.

  “Are these you and your siblings?” she asked.

  The boy’s freckled nose was turned up, like Johnny’s. He wore a suit, white shirt and striped tie; his brown hair in a business cut.

  “A goddamned studio shot,” Johnny said. “Brendan bawled through the whole thing. My dad’s funny faces and fingers flapping from his ears couldn’t shut him up. Cynthia lost patience and passed him to me.”

  The baby, Brendan, was the only one of the trio smiling. Two teeth poked up from his lower gum. His face was pink, his eyes bright. You wouldn’t guess their glow came from tears. Cynthia and Johnny, the teens, had serious, but not miserable, expressions.

  “I got Brendan to stop howling by whispering in his ear that I’d beat him up if he didn’t quit.”

  Johnny grinned. Was he teasing her, or had he really be
en that mean? Paula concluded that both were equally plausible.

  Chapter Three

  Belly dancers in orange halters and pantaloons whisked guns out of their holsters. They twirled the pistols around their fingers and shot imaginary bullets into the air.

  “A blend of the old and new Calgary,” Paula said to her mother, who was seated on the lawn chair beside her. Over the past few years Paula had noticed more and more multicultural floats and acts in the Stampede Parade. Today Asian, Middle Eastern and Caribbean communities would march with descendants of the original pioneers.

  Her cellphone rang. Brendan Becker, returning her message.

  “Great of you to call,” he said. “I’ve been bugging Cynthia to contact the insurance company.”

  The belly dancers moved on. A bowlegged man wearing riding chaps bounded toward Paula and her mother. He moved his arms in circles.

  “Cynthia refused—”

  “YAHOO,” the cowboy shouted.

  “YAHOO,” the crowd answered.

  “YEE-HAW.”

  “YEE-HAW.” Paula’s mother joined in.

  “You sound like you’re at the parade,” Brendan said against a backdrop of trombones.

  “You, too. Whereabouts?”

  “Near the beginning.”

  The cowboy hollered again. For Brendan, three blocks north, the parade would be over halfway through. Here, they still had a good twenty minutes of preshow. If it hadn’t been for her mother, Paula would have arrived at the last minute, peered around cowboy hats at floats and bands and, most likely, left early to take care of some work. The noisy cowboy moved on.

  “Where was I?” Brendan said. “Oh, yeah, Cynthia refused to give me your number. She insists on taking charge of everything and then handles it inefficiently.”

  “Are you staying with her?”

  “The instant I stepped in her house, I knew that would never work.”

  “I could come by your place tomorrow, if you’ll be in.”

  “I volunteered to flip pancakes at a breakfast.” Whoops at his end drowned out his next sentence.