The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  “Irene. Listen to me. Has your mother seen a doctor?”

  “No doctors. Dad’s quite clear.” She stuck her chin out, and he sensed she’d fought and lost that battle. “He knows about medicine. He gives her pills. They help.”

  “Maybe your mother needs to go somewhere where she can get the rest she needs.” He brushed hair out of her eyes.

  Irene’s eyes flew open wide and she grabbed his shirtsleeve. “Uncle Rory, you must promise me, promise me, you won’t say anything like that to them. You have to promise. They won’t have it, and if they think I’ve talked to you about this! You don’t know! It will make her worse!” She twisted her fingers in his sleeve. “Promise me! Or I can’t talk to you. You don’t know what it would mean. To have everyone know. A pharmacist’s wife gone crazy! Why, no one would ever go to the store again. We’d be in terrible trouble. Even worse than now.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  He put his arms around her. “Okay. Okay. We’ll think of something.” He heard her mumble into his shoulder.

  “Take me away with you.”

  Hadn’t Margaret said the same words to him, the last time he’d seen her? He should have seen that coming. Should have known it would seem like the logical solution to Irene.

  “You gotta understand, Irene. I don’t live anyplace right now. My work takes me all over. I live too rough. You’d be worse off.” He wouldn’t tell her about what could happen to a young girl in a shantytown.

  “I wouldn’t be a bother.”

  “I know you wouldn’t be, but I just couldn’t risk it. Besides, I know, no matter how tough it is right now, your mum and dad love you and it would break their hearts to have you disappear like that. And this won’t be forever. Why, in just a couple of years you’ll be all grown up and married yourself.” He smiled at her. “I’ll have a wee talk with your dad. I’ll go over there now. I won’t say you and I talked at all. Just say I’m worried about things. You let us work this out, Irene. Let the grown-ups handle it. Okay?”

  “Sure, Uncle Rory. It was just a silly thought. We’re fine, really. Mum might be right as rain tomorrow. It goes like that. She might just snap out of it.” Her voice was light with lies. She looked at her watch. “I really have to go back. It won’t help if I’m not home when she wakes up. See you later.”

  And before he could say anything she turned and hurried down the street.

  1933

  David leans up against his pack, not so near the fire as the rest. He is tired and wishes the men would settle down so he can get some sleep. He is feeling low and dirty, even though he has $10 in his pocket. How long will that last?

  It had only been three weeks’ work, and it is over now. He still can’t fathom the unbelievable luck of it. They’d thought it was a cruel prank at first. The train stopped, and he and some thirty other men had started to scramble off, afraid there was going to be a roust. It wasn’t jail they were afraid of so much as the beating that might go along with it. But four men in overalls stood next to a couple of big pickup trucks. Said they were looking for hands to pick tobacco. Right off, nobody moved, figuring it to be a sick joke. When they realized it wasn’t, the four men were nearly stampeded, and one of them fired off a rifle to make the men settle down. Everybody who wanted to work got picked, and that meant every man jack of them.

  Picking tobacco was filthy, hot work. They lay on their stomachs on flatbeds, pulled by horses, leaning over the edge. This way they pulled the leaves off but didn’t tread on the new shoots coming up behind. David had trouble getting the hang of it, and was afraid he’d be kicked off the gang, until the guy next to him, a small, fiercely malodorous man who said he was from Kelowna showed him how.

  “Thanks, friend. Name’s David Hirsch,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the man but declined to give his name, and David knew better than to press it. Men on the road were allowed to keep whatever secrets they chose.

  The sun beat down unmercifully and their flesh burned through their shirts and the rags they wrapped around their heads. The little guy next to him must have had three layers of clothes on, and David couldn’t understand how he didn’t pass out from the heat. David himself burned so bad he had blisters from his shoulders to his waist.

  He hated the fat white slugs that curled up at the base of the leaves. You couldn’t help but crush them and they left a sticky slime all over your hands that itched like hell. Maybe it was being so hungry, or maybe it was the infernal angle at which they had to hold their arms, but it was harder than he remembered work on the family’s own farm had ever been. Still, it had been work, and any work was all right and he felt let down and lost when it ended. It had been the first work he’d had in a year.

  He leans back on the rock and chews a stalk of dry grass while he tries to figure out where to go now. Most likely back out west for no other reason than there isn’t anywhere better to go. Maybe he’ll hit Montreal for a few weeks and then skip back to Vancouver for the winter. It isn’t so cold out there. He scratches his groin. Shit. He’s probably picked up crabs in the tobacco camp. He’ll have to get some kerosene.

  “You’re fucking crazy!” says Pete, a hulking guy with a scraggly red beard.

  “I’m fucking crazy? You’re the one who’s fucking crazy!” says the little guy who’d worked next to David in the fields.

  Somebody has got hold of a couple of bottles of wine and they’ve been passing them back and forth among the other six men. Voices get louder with every round. David is eighteen now. He is taller and stronger than when he left home. No matter how strong he is, though, he doesn’t want to get mixed up in a fight over something as stupid as this. He watches from the shadows, keeping an eye on Pete, who gets up, swaying a little. The bottle hangs from his right hand.

  “I’m telling ya, ya jackass, that it’s Teddy who’s president,” says Pete.

  “And I’m telling you that you’re fucking wrong. Franklin D. is president. Don’t you read the goddamn papers?”

  “You calling me ignorant?”

  “Sit down, Pete,” says another man. “Have another drink and then pass that bottle along, why don’t ya?”

  “You probably don’t even know who the prime minister is, do ya?” says the little guy.

  “You calling me ignorant?” repeats Pete. He passes the bottle but stays on his feet, takes a step closer to the little guy.

  The little guy stands up, too, and David wishes he wouldn’t, wishes he would sit back down. The little guy’s head barely reaches Pete’s shoulder.

  “You know about as much as a dog knows about its grandmother,” he says.

  Pete grabs him and throws him like a sack of rags. It happens very quickly. David hadn’t thought Pete could move that fast, drunk as he is. The little guy’s head hits the rocks surrounding the fire with a thick crack. He kicks his legs out a couple of times and makes a noise like he’s being strangled, then he lays very still.

  For five, perhaps six, seconds, no one moves, until a sharp pop from a piece of burning wood breaks the terrible enchantment. One of the men gets up and touches the little guy’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He pulls his hand away and it is covered in blood.

  “Shit, you bastard, Pete.”

  “It was a fucking accident! He fell. You all saw that!” says Pete. “It was a fucking accident.”

  The men stand and look down at the inert form. David stands, too, but doesn’t approach the circle. Silently, Pete picks up the body and carries it down the tracks. After a few minutes he comes back, sits down and snatches the wine away from the man to his right. He drinks it all down, until the bottle is empty, and he throws it into the wood, where they hear it land with a thud. He glowers at the men, daring them to say something. After a while they hear a train coming down the line.

  The next day there’ll be talk about a drunk who fell asleep with his head on the rail. Who’s to say? It happens all the time.

  David picks up his pack and walks into the nigh
t. He feels his throat tighten and sharp prickling behind his eyes. He thinks about the little guy and how scared he’d been all the time, wearing his three jackets and two pairs of pants, no matter how hot the weather, so no one would steal them before winter. Only the booze had made him fearless, and look what that moment of courage had got him. Didn’t matter a damn that the little guy’d been right. Right didn’t matter much out here.

  11

  As Rory walked he worried his knuckles until they cracked and popped, and by the time he arrived at the shop he’d gone over what he wanted to say to his brother-in-law. The little bell over the door rang as he strode in.

  What he saw surprised him. When he had last seen the place, it had been a run-of-the-mill little pharmacy. Shelves of creams and oils and hairpins and salves. An appropriately gleaming counter behind which Douglas stood dispensing pills. A rack of magazines. Nothing ostentatious, but a proud little shop.

  It had changed.

  To the right of the entrance was a long counter and eight chrome stools with red leather seats. On the wall behind were the shiny-loud trappings of a soda fountain. A cooler for ice cream. Large arced taps for the soda. A big mirror reflecting glasses and bowls and spoons. There were three small black metal tables, each with two chairs, in the centre of the room. The place looked deserted, though.

  Toward the back of the room was a second counter, smaller, as though huddled shamefully in the shadows. On it stood a large cash register and a small sign: Prescriptions Filled. Rory was relieved to see that against the wall, shelves displayed the sorts of things he expected to see in a drug store: toothbrushes, hairbrushes, packages of bandages, smelling salts, soaps, eucalyptus inhalations, and packages of powders for making spruce and ginger beer.

  Rory’s brow furrowed as he examined the mirror behind the soda fountain; it was speckled with spots and smears. The wooden floor was dusty, and none of the bottles and tins of health supplies had the ship-shape-shiny look Rory remembered. The windows were dim with grime, and dead flies lay on the sill. To think he used to laugh at his brother-in-law for being so meticulous, almost prissy.

  Douglas was nowhere to be seen. Rory looked at the clock on the wall. Four-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. Surely if this was supposed to be a hangout for kids, it wasn’t working. It didn’t look as though anybody had been eating ice cream at those tables in days.

  “Doug!” Rory called out. “It’s Rory. You in the back?”

  “Just a minute. Be right with you.”

  Rory heard scuffling from the storeroom and rustling papers, then Douglas stepped through the curtain. He was sweaty and flushed. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked far older than when Rory had last seen him. His features were loose and soft and battered. Rory knew that no matter how crazy she might be, about this one thing Margaret sure was right.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Douglas. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He came around the counter, his hand extended. As Rory took it, the familiar odour reached him. The smell of men long-gone was always the same. It seeped out of their pores, sickly sweet and sour at the same time. The smell of a body trying unsuccessfully to cleanse itself of a poisoning.

  “It’s been a long time. A long time,” Douglas said, his voice blustery with good humour.

  “Too long, I think. How are you, Doug?”

  “Oh, can’t complain. Times are hard but you soldier on. Make the best of a bad situation, eh?” He scratched the back of his head, and little white flakes of dandruff fell on his knitted vest. “You’ll come and see the girls, of course. They’ll be mighty glad to see you. Mighty glad.”

  “I’ve been up to the house already.”

  “Oh, yes? Well, then, that’s good. Good. Bet Margaret was pleased. So tell me, what do you think of the place? You want a soda? You can see I’ve made some improvements. A real brainstorm.” He gestured toward the soda fountain. “Or maybe something a little more grown-up? A little more fortifying?” He winked at Rory and rubbed his hands together.

  “Not for me, thanks all the same.”

  “What, no celebratory drink? Well, I’m certainly going to celebrate,” he said defiantly, as though Rory had told him he should not. “Don’t you go away.” He disappeared into the back of the shop and returned carrying a half-full bottle of whisky and two small glasses. He motioned for Rory to sit at a table, took a seat himself and filled both glasses to the rim.

  “Go on, man! A toast to homecomings!” He held out the glass. Rory took it and sipped. Douglas took a large gulp from his and then shook his head. “Strong stuff that! Wowzer! Puts hair on your chest. Drink up!”

  The change that had come over Douglas seemed nearly impossible to Rory. When he’d first met Douglas all those years ago, hovering around his sister, timid and awkwardly proud, hoping for an introduction, Rory had thought him too stuffy, too obsessed with social constraints. A bit old-womanish. Douglas wasn’t a man who would have suited the word wowzer, a foolish word used, in Rory’s opinion, by foolish people trying to be more sophisticated than they could ever hope to be. Now it suited him all too well.

  “Doug, I want to talk about Margaret. She doesn’t seem well to me.”

  “Not well? Oh, now, don’t you worry yourself about Margaret. She’s a nervous little thing.”

  “I’d say it’s gone a sight past nerves. She tells me she won’t go out because the neighbours are spying.”

  “Nonsense—and tomorrow she’ll say something different.” Douglas poured himself another drink. He didn’t bother to ask Rory, whose glass remained virtually untouched, if he wanted more.

  “Does it seem normal that your wife thinks the neighbours are spying on her?”

  “She’s moody.”

  “I think it’s more than that.”

  “You’ve decided this, have you? After a few hours in my house—my house, mind—after years of absence?”

  Rory was both impressed and appalled at how Douglas resisted admitting his wife was ill. He didn’t want to betray Irene’s confidence, and suspected he would get little support for her cause from Douglas at any rate. And when all was said and done, Margaret might be his sister, but she was Douglas’s wife. He could interfere only so far.

  “She says she hasn’t been out of the house in months.”

  “She exaggerates.” Douglas drank from his glass, which was nearly empty again. He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, scowling.

  “Look, Doug, I don’t think I’m getting through here. I’m saying I think Margaret’s sick. She needs someone to look at her. A doctor.”

  “Nonsense. I don’t know who you think you are, quite frankly. May I suggest you tread lightly, Rory, tread lightly.” He toyed with his empty glass. “Have a drink with me. Let’s have no more of this talk.”

  Rory covered his glass with his hand.

  “Suit yourself.” Douglas put his own empty glass down with a sour look. “But I’m telling you once and for all, there are no problems in my house, Rory, and I would tell you to look to your own, if you had one, which I suspect you do not.”

  “Then, explain to me why Margaret tells me you’re drinking yourself to death and drinking this place into the ground.”

  Douglas stood up from the table. He walked behind the counter and began to polish the top with a grimy-looking cloth. “I told you, Rory. There is no problem that requires the assistance of outsiders.”

  Rory watched Douglas’s eyes roam back to the whisky bottle, and noted the look of hunger. Rory rolled his own glass between his hands, his elbows on the table. He stared into the amber liquid and said quietly, “So what are you doing drinking like this in the middle of the day? I’ll bet my last nickel you’ve been going at it pretty good since, what, noon?”

  Douglas slammed the top of the counter with his open palm.

  “I will not be spoken to like that. Not by you or anyone, see. Not anyone! And particularly not some road dog hopeful for a … Yes, I might just as well say it—for a handout and a free ride.”
Douglas wiped sweat off his neck with a grey handkerchief and blew his nose. He looked at Rory with his chin stuck out as though daring him to take a swing.

  Rory studied Douglas, the pouting and yet slightly loose lower lip, the indignant eye, the bright flame of alcohol-induced rage. He fought down the impulse to give Douglas a pop in the snout and then shake him until … That was the problem. Rory wasn’t sure he’d know when to stop.

  “And what about Irene? Even you must see she’s unhappy!”

  “Must I?” Douglas bristled. “You seem to have a great number of opinions, my man, for someone with no family of his own.” His eyes strayed back to the shining bottle, to the empty glass, but he stayed where he was. He was shaking, but whether with rage or the desire for a drink, Rory couldn’t tell.

  “Look, Douglas, ending up in a brawl isn’t going to help either one of us. Hell, I’m awfully fond of my sister, and Irene. Truth be told, Douglas, I’m even kinda partial to you.” Rory smiled, cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, looking a bit of a fool on purpose. He had learned it was sometimes easier to disarm rage if he let the other man think himself superior.

  “I’ve got no job for you here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Never occurred to me. I’ve gotta go back on the road soon. No two ways about that. There’s a bit of work I’ve got to see to out Nova Scotia way.”

  This was true. Rory knew, no matter what disaster he found here, there were other, larger causes to which he had committed himself. He would soon be on his way again, and what he could do for his sister was limited. That’s my escape route, he thought, and the thought didn’t make him proud.

  “Nothing down there but fish and coal mines,” said Douglas.

  “Not an easy life, that’s true. The miners have it harder than most.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to take up mining? Listen, did I ever tell you about that fella I knew, thought he’d make it big mining for gold in South America?” Douglas’s mood had shifted again, in the mercurial way of drunks, and he began to tell a long, twisted tale Rory suspected was only half true. Douglas poured himself another drink and when he had finished that he poured another, and they sat together for more than two hours, because as distressing as it was watching Douglas in the condition he was in, it was better than dealing with Margaret. The two men stayed until the street grew quiet as one store after another closed for the day, but no customer ever entered the shop.