by Nick Craine
“Sure is.”
Chellis next picked up the golf ball and tossed it to Robert. “You like high-class Euro- hooch? I think maybe we could liven this place up some.”
By the time Chellis pulled into the Kinchie Coffee Nook, he was feeling much better and had learned an encyclopaedic amount about the wee town and its residents. Live here? No friggin way. It was like any small town, serene and pretty on the surface, with tangled, boggy depths below into which you did not want to peer. Unless Robert Burns, his imagination overstimulated by boredom, plus two fine bottles of wine (two dead soldiers now laid to rest in the Kinchie boneyard) was simply an outstanding storyteller.
The moment Chellis passed through the door into the Nook, all conversation, which had been lively, ceased. No matter. He marched boldly through the pin-drop silence to the only seat available at the counter, and while inserting himself between a burly trucker-type and a stocky farmer-type, he handed the policeman’s missive to the stunning, dark-haired young woman who was stationed in front of the coffee machine, already pouring him a cup. A low, but audible groan emanated from the Nook’s clientele.
Cindy slid his coffee into place, glanced at the note, smiled sweetly, then slipped it into her apron pocket, where it teamed up with a pack of fellow-notes, thick as a deck of cards. No doubt everyone wanted to marry her, but Chellis had gotten over her already. Amazing how quickly a crack on the head will bring you to your senses. He had what he needed from Kinchie – more than he wanted – and his only wedding plan at present was to fuel up, get mildly sober, drive home and reunite with his fabulously comfortable, safe, and secluded bed.
“Don’t do it, Cindy,” a guy sitting by the window called out.
“Yeah, don’t let him wear you down,” someone else agreed.
Several others chorused this sentiment.
The trucker-type turned to Chellis, “Seventh proposal from that cop today. I brung one in myself.”
“Ah,” said Chellis.
“Drink up, pal. You look like shit. Walk into a wall or sumpthin?”
“Defence wounds.” Chellis sipped his coffee daintily.
“No kiddin? Wouldna guessed you was the type.”
“Marriage.” Cindy was gazing squarely at Chellis. “Isn’t that the purpose of life, though? To give love, and to receive it. To be capable of doing both? To be strong enough.”
“Umm . . . well.” Obviously Cindy had been dipping into the Harlequins.
“Cindy’s been reading Annie Dillard,” the farmer-type spoke up.
“That’s a fact,” agreed the trucker-type.
“Way to go, Cindy,” a guy in the back called out.
“Outa the mouths of babes,” someone else shouted.
“True, I have,” admitted Cindy, still eyeing Chellis. “But my observation is more general. I could be referring to any number of writers’ works, couldn’t I? I mean, isn’t that the theme of most literature when you come right down to it?”
“Er,” said Chellis.
“More coffee?”
“Please.” He pushed his cup forward and cleared his throat. “Does this mean you’re going to marry him?”
“Would you?”
Chellis shrugged. “He’s honest.” (He’s short.) “He followed me for miles to return my lost wallet. See here.” He retrieved the wallet from his back pocket by way of proof and held it up. “Wait a minute, this isn’t my wallet.” He flipped it open. “Mine had plastic surgery weeks ago and . . . good gravy, can this be right? Get a load of the Robert Borden clones, the MacKenzie Kings.” Dead white guys (tinged with colour) with too much denominational class to visit his own working-man’s wallet in such numbers. “Okay Cindy, dessert’s on me, everyone hear that? Eat up, have seconds, thirds, go ahead fill your boots, pie for all!”
“That’s nice,” said Cindy. “I should marry you instead.”
“Nah,” said the trucker. “He’s not the marrying type.” The farmer nodded in agreement.
“Too bad,” Cindy smiled again, and turned away to serve out slabs of Boston cream and lemon meringue pie, laying waste her whole fan club with lard, white death, and yellow food dye #5.
“So what type am I?” Chellis said huffily.
“Wuss, I mighta said, but since yer buyin . . .”
“Tell us,” said the farmer. “What brings you to town?”
“Genealogy.”
“We’ve had a few of those in the last while. Nothing better to do, I guess.”
“It’s for a friend. She’s curious, can’t blame her. Her past is a mystery.”
“A blessing if you want my opinion. You know what Nietzsche said?”
“Woof, woof?” offered Chellis.
“Mm, more or less. But more specifically, he said we spend far too much time labouring in the shadows of the past. That our personal and collective inheritance stands in the way of our enjoyment of life.”
“You’re pretty knowledgeable for a man of the soil.”
“Who said I was a man of the soil? Although I suppose I am in a way. I’m the county coroner.”
“Holy, what brings you to town?” Chellis asked.
“The usual.”
“You wanna know a little secret?” the trucker cut in.
“Let me guess,” Chellis said. “You don’t really drive a transport, but operate a boutique in town called Intelligent Design that sells Alfred Prufrock coffee spoons and Jackson Pollock wallpaper?”
“More candy-asses, huh? Nope, I drive a truck all right, but what I wanna tell ya – ”
Chellis didn’t find out, at least not immediately. Someone’s cell started to play Funky Butt, a blues tune he liked, and turning to check who was going to answer the ringtone, he was surprised to see a Mennonite in traditional togs cup the phone to his ear. “Yo,” the Mennonite said, or it might have been, “Ja?” It was difficult to hear over the resonant clamour of forks scraping pie off restaurant crockery. The Mennonite looked up, nodded curtly at Chellis, and waggling the phone, called out, “It’s for you, man.”
“Me?”
“Here,” he tossed the phone.
Chellis made a grab and caught it. “Hello?” he said tentatively, thinking maybe it was Robert Burns, his raconteur, last seen weaving into a grey brick bungalow with a darkened, oversized picture window that made his house look about as inviting as a black hole, poor bugger.
“Chelly, is that you?”
“Moe? Is that you? How did you know I was . . . how did you find me?”
“Heck, it wasn’t that hard. But Chel, um, Hunt is having a cardiac event.”
“Great, am I invited?”
“Ha, ha, you’re so funny. But no, what I want to say is . . . is . . . he’s dying.”
“What? What?!”
“I’m at the hospital, could you . . . could you, please, Chelly?”
God. “Right away, Moe, I’m leaving immediately, this very instant.” Not Hunt, not Hunt. “Hang in, I’ll be there. It’ll be fine, Moe, everything will be okay.”
On the other end of the line her voice shivered, and broke.
Another complete silence now possessed the Coffee Nook.
“Hey, sorry,” someone said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“And thanks, eh.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The coroner touched his arm, gave it a squeeze.
The trucker, leaned toward him, and whispered, “What I wanted to tell ya, eh, you’ll wanta know, is uhh, yer fly’s down.”
Cindy, gazing over all their heads through the Nook’s front window at the gathering darkness, said only, “Horseman, pass by.”
11
HEART, failure
CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL – a cardiac event, an arterial incident, a corporal malfunction – but it was only language pussyfooting around disaster and throwing up little white picket defences. Chellis whacked himself on the head with a rolled up magazine. Punning in the present circumstance was a punishable offence. He
whacked himself again. The five others seated in the OR waiting room pretended not to notice, but their slack postures tightened ever so slightly and their eyelids faintly quivered as irises contracted in an attempt to block further disturbing data from entry. Chellis whacked himself one more time just for the hell of it, and because a pain in the head was preferable to a pain in the heart.
No one spoke. Not even Moe. She patted his hand reassuringly, the habit of cheeriness so deeply ingrained that she herself might require an operation to have it removed. Death would surely arrange that.
Chellis unfurled the magazine, a sadly mauled Time from the previous century, and tried to read an article on stem cell research. He failed. The columns in the magazine consisted of indecipherable slabs of wordage. He was experiencing an illiterate incident, possibly related to cranial trauma.
“I can’t read,” he whispered to Moe.
“Neither can I,” she whispered back.
“I mean, I’ve forgotten how.”
“No you haven’t, Chelly. You learned in grade three. You were a slow learner, but once you got started, boy oh boy.”
“Who told you that?”
“Hunt.”
“Hunt,” Chellis nodded. “You talked to his folks? When are they getting here?”
“Can’t make it,” Moe said. “But they’re sending a fish.”
“A fish?”
“Very good for the heart.”
“A fish.”
“For Christmas last year they gave us gift certificates for colonic irrigation.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Yeah.”
Chellis tackled another article, and although his reading skills had been restored, he found the writing repulsive, the prose bonethin and expiring before his eyes. It made him feel ill. More ill. He tossed the magazine aside and smelled his hands. He seemed to be the bearer, on his skin, under his nails, of a subterranean, graveyard taint. Not only was he bad luck and bad news, but he’d gone bad.
“I stink,” he said.
Moe leaned toward him and sniffed, while everyone else in the room leaned farther away.
“French fries,” she declared. “That’s not so bad.”
“Dammit, I bet it was The Age Spot. That’s what did it to him.”
“You can’t die from one of those, can you?”
“God, I feel so porous.”
“Chel?”
“So organic.”
“Organic is good.”
“I’m damaged tissue.”
“I don’t think so, that’s an infarction.”
“An infarction?”
“Myocardial infarction, what Hunt has. That’s what Dr. Huh said. Hunt thought it was indigestion.”
“Did you say Huh?”
“Dr. Huh, the specialist.”
“We’re entrusting Hunt’s life to someone called Huh?”
“All doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, Chelly.”
“Moe, everyone should take the Hippocratic Oath.”
“That’s so true! I hadn’t thought of that.” Then she did, blinking quickly a couple of times as she entertained a fleeting vision of global good manners and universal kindness. “But anyway, I didn’t see how it could be indigestion because Hunt never seemed to eat much anymore. He was never hungry and yet he kept putting on weight.”
“That does it! It is her fault. I’ll kill her.”
“Who?”
“Bev.”
“Gosh Chel, was Hunt . . . are you telling me . . . be honest now, was he having, was there someone?”
“It was an affair of the stomach, Moe, that’s all. You know how much he loves you. Loves you and loves you and – ”
Moe gasped. Her hands flew up to her face, trembling hands, the reason she’d been clasping them so tightly, he now realized. This earned him a sideways, way-to-go-pal look from a Mafioso-type seated several chairs to the right. At least he hadn’t said he loves you to death. Clichés could be so casually reckless, coolly plunging through the guardrails into cold, otherworldly waters: I could have died! Look alive, will you. Dead on! Or possibly it was only his own phrasing that kept pulling him into Pluto’s realm.
Someone else in the room sighed in subdued condemnation, expelling exhaustion into this dread antechamber, this waiting and waiting and more waiting room. Well, it wasn’t the first time Chellis had said the wrong thing (his average about one out of three), but his heart was in the right place. Oh Christ. Where was Hunt’s heart this very moment? In the hands of Dr. Duh, getting reamed like the lemon it apparently was. What were his chances? Slim, Chellis understood. And if he lived, what kind of shape would he be in? Oxygen to the brain being the true elixir of life. Get Rèal. That was the catchy slogan on Hunt’s business card. Chellis had been greatly amused when Hunt, on entering the realty game, had changed his first name from Humphry to this dashing little French syllable. I’ll never tease him again, Chellis promised the overheated air in the room, the deep-fried chi, the overworked deity-intern on duty – Was anyone or anything listening?! Or perhaps that was the wrong tack. Rather, he’d tease him mercilessly, tease him back to health, galvanize him with electric wit. Get Rèal! It hadn’t been intended as an invitation to the Reaper. The name was nothing more than innocent advertising, a bilingual jest, OK?
“Moe?” He placed his hand on her back, rubbed gently.
“Sorry, Chelly.” She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. “That was really very sweet of you. To say that.”
“You know me, I say the darndest things.” Don’t lose heart.
“A coronary, though. A coronary? I was thinking, I know this sounds totally dumb, but doesn’t it sound like it should mean something else, that word? Something better?”
“You mean like a crown?”
“Mm-hmm. Made with pretty yellow flowers.”
“How about a rosary strung with corn kernels? Ideal for sending a few prayers to the god of corn, my personal representative in the heavens.”
Moe smiled.
“You want anything, Moe? A coffee? I have to go make a quick call.”
She shook her head, lowered her voice to a frightened, wisp of sound. “Is Hunt going to make it?”
A query aimed point blank. What to say?
“Yes,” he said. Then bolted before she took note of the yellow streak on his back.
When Chellis returned from getting no caller satisfaction, his brow all-a-crinkle, and rolling a bandage from one of his destroyed temples consideringly between his thumb and forefinger, he discovered that Moe had company. Old girlfriend of his.
“Elaine!”
“Why, hello, Chel. I thought you were – ”
His eyes widened in alarm. Elaine was usually more tactful, if not with him.
“Er, away,” she continued. “On a trip. Vaughan said you’d be gone for months.”
“The dork.”
“He is not.”
“Doink, then.”
“Mnph!”
“Now, you two,” scolded Moe. “Don’t get started. Sometimes, I dunno, I swear you’re brother and sister.”
“Ick,” said Elaine.
“I would never under any circumstances let my genetic material touch hers,” Chellis countered. Well, mayyybe. “Any news?”
“Not yet.” Moe bit her lip.
“What happened to your head?” said Elaine.
The question of the day! When he had roared into Emergency trying to locate Hunt’s whereabouts, he’d had a devil of a time convincing the nurses not to haul him off on a stretcher. “I dislocated it.”
“Surprise, surprise,” she said. “Your head’s always somewhere else.”
“Why do I like you? Remind me, will you?”
“Got me.” Elaine brushed a pencilshaving off the cuff of her baggy utility sweater. “But you do wear your heart on your sleeve, don’t you?”
Chellis winced and Elaine bit her lip. But Moe didn’t catch the gaff; she didn’t seem to be listening.
“If you really an
d truly want to know, someone tried to bump me off. Someone other than you for a refreshing change.”
“Give me a break,” scoffed Elaine. “You’ve been reading too many of your employer’s books.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” Moe blurted.
“That’s okay,” said Chellis. “I know you wouldn’t try to bump me off, Moe.” Now he bit his lip.
“I’d never do that! Not intentionally, anyway.”
“Great. That’s a relief. So what do you have to be embarrassed about?”
Moe made a face. “Hunt popped a button on his pants.”
“Could happen to anyone,” said Chellis. “But go on, I sense there’s more to this.”
Everyone in the room grew very attentive.
“I should have sewn it back on,” Moe said.
“‘I know not should.’” responded Chellis.
“That’s for sure,” said Elaine.
“It’s a quote,” hissed Chellis. “Hamlet.”
“Another ditherer,” said Elaine. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about not sewing a button on your husband’s pants, Moe. I mean, honestly. It would be more embarrassing to confess that you had.”
“It’s not about that, it’s not a feminist thing. You see, I told him to use a twist-tie until he could fix it. So when we rushed him to Emergency, he had a twist-tie holding up his pants like some poor street person. Golly, I cringe when I think of it. The nurses probably thought it was a hoot, a big laugh. I turned the man I love into a laughingstock.”
“But Moe, a twist-tie, that’s quick thinking,” said Elaine.
Several people in the room nodded.
Elaine patted her knee. “If Alexander McQueen got hold of that idea, twist-ties would soon be on all the catwalks of Paris.”
“Please don’t tell him,” begged Moe.
“I’d get a patent for that idea if I were you,” said Chellis, giving the now shrewdly pondering Elaine a warning look.
“My sister choked on a button and tried to give herself the Hiemlich Manoeuver.” A member of the room’s silent majority had spoken up. A middle-class, middle-aged woman with a worry-engraved face.