At the threshold of the high-school gym, I listened to the women say hospitals were for sick people, and that children ought to be born into loving arms in their family homes. I imagined Danny in our bedroom, the bed plastic-sheeted, smeared with blood and amniotic fluid, me, sprawled, dead, Thomas trapped inside me. I could see Danny, arms at his sides, open-mouthed and howling in our family home, and I knew that something may have been lost in Thomas’s actual birth, but that the bloody tunnel of this imagined scene was worse. I turned away from the door, where inside the women were beginning to flow between the yoga mats set out on the floor. I put on my boots and walked away down the hall. The door banged shut behind me.
In the car, the heater blasted cold air at my face before it finally warmed. I followed the highway through the reserve, over the bridge, and out of town. I flew past fields and sudden white stands of poplar and birch. The “Welcome to Fort St. James” sign rose up on the left and receded in the rear-view. The moon stabbed light down when the clouds shifted, illuminating sections of road, the corners of barns, stark fence posts held together by scraps of broken wire. I burned down the highway, furious and exultant, thinking I’d escaped—but from what? The women? The school? The willows in the ditch? I felt cowardly and wretched for not even giving it a try. Why hadn’t I stayed? There was no way to know if all the women were the same. I remembered yoga classes in the city: my self-satisfaction at stretching and bending, being beautiful among beautiful strangers. I smacked the flat of my hand against the steering wheel. It was like me to overreact. I wanted to close my eyes and scream. Instead, I pulled off the road and sat. There were no lights. There were no houses or barns or fences, just tight-packed pine forest a few metres from the highway. I leaned my head on the steering wheel and thought about going back to the cabin. Danny would have Thomas in bed, clean and fed. Maybe he’d have cracked himself a beer, or maybe made coffee.
I thought of him there in his grandpa’s old cabin and felt worn out and wronged. I wanted a studio apartment in Kitsilano. I wanted to study at the Sorbonne. I wanted a body that hadn’t known childbirth or anything but sun-drenched days and ease. I thought of Thomas, and guilt came seeping in, dark and wet. I wanted Thomas, but I wanted to want him more.
I started up the car and did a U-turn on the highway, barely looking around. There was more danger from passing wildlife than from turning blindly into the oncoming lane so late at night in this stalled season. I headed toward home, feeling like I was driving into a fog bank. The only thing that spurred me on were my breasts, which had started to fill, ready for the ten o’clock feeding.
Cow, I thought to myself, but I amended it to poor cow when tears sprang up. I cast around, eyes darting from thicket of bush to copse of trees, trying to think of something I could do instead of think, instead of feeling all this self-pity. My breasts stung and I landed on it: weaning the baby. I could do that. Eight months was long enough. It couldn’t be that hard—I could buy formula tomorrow and start cutting out feedings. I had breastfeeding books to help me figure out how to do it. I wondered what Danny would think, but then I decided it was up to me, not him. I drove a little faster, following the lake out of town toward the bay, full to bursting with ideas of what I could do without having to sit down every few hours to feed the baby: I could put him in the playpen with a bottle while I drank a cup of tea without it going cold; I could finish the dishes or read a chapter without abandoning it halfway through. Thoughts roiled through me. I was on automatic pilot when I turned off the road into the parking lot of the pub.
I parked the car snug up to the Dream Beaver on the gravel and got out to stretch my legs. In the bright light of the street lamp the hulking Fords and flatbeds loomed. I was disoriented, surprised to find myself there. A throaty laugh came from behind me and I turned toward the sound.
Glory grinned at me from the gloom beside the building. “Didn’t expect I’d see you quite so soon.” She dropped her cigarette butt and ground it out with her heel. She gestured to the pub. “Don’t look like much, but it’s mine. I think they pay the mortgage with my tab alone.” She snorted. “Come on in!” She held out her hand toward the massive carved front doors of the bar.
Two beavers, nose to nose, met at the crack between the doors. Their cross-hatched tails were grotesquely exaggerated, stretching twice the length of the beavers to the height of the door frame. Raised, inlaid silver teeth protruded from their mouths. I stared a second and ran my hand over the left beaver’s head.
“Nice.”
“A bit fucking elaborate, if you ask me.” Glory pushed past me to haul one door open. A fug of smoke and night-time bodies wafted out, and she took my hand as we walked in.
The pub was new to me, but the feel of it, the cloying smoke and heat reminded me of all the bars I’d known. The bar itself stretched a good three metres into the centre of a wide room whose recesses, the walls, and all the alcoves were decorated with bright-eyed stuffed owls, fish, beavers, and an enormous buffalo head. Glory led me to the far end of it, and leaned over it to shout at a burly woman who was glaring at us.
“Hi, Sandy. Two Canterbury. No glasses.”
Sandy didn’t quit glaring. She glared while her hands grabbed two bottle necks sticking out of the ice in the sink. She plunked them on the bar, then set two glasses beside the brown bottles. “Six bucks, Glory.”
“I said no glasses.”
“Whatever.”
“Put it on my tab.”
Sandy looked like she had more to say. The red bulbs in the light fixtures above her head made the streaks in her hair violently purple. As she turned away, I distinctly heard her utter the word “whore.” I looked at Glory, who smiled out at the room in general.
The room was full, mostly of men. Glory looked like she’d come home after a long day of work. She took my hand and pulled me toward a table.
“We’ll sit with Bill.”
Bill’s belly rested on his thighs. He wore spiked boots that were unlaced so the tall sides of them slouched along his calves. He reached out and caught Glory’s skirt. “Hey, sugar lady.”
“Hey, yourself.” She sat beside him in a leather chair. She pushed me toward another chair and put her feet on Bill’s lap. “Hold these for me, would you?”
The table erupted in laughter. Glory’s skirt fell down from her waist in a curtain, suggesting the long bare legs behind the fabric. The men seemed all mouth and suspenders and whiskers to me. I sat as compactly as I could in the chair Glory offered—the arms had a sticky film I didn’t want to touch.
“Who’s yer friend, Glory?” Bill looked me up and down.
“This is Renee. She’s new,” Glory told him. “Renee’s on the prowl.”
“I am not,” I burst out.
Glory looked at Bill’s cigarette, then at his face, raising her eyebrows. He leaned over and put a cigarette in her mouth, then lit it and sat back. She inhaled, then exhaled, sizing me up. “Well, maybe she’s not.”
The men laughed and the table shook. I sat, small in my chair, my purse on my lap. A man with a skinny face shadowed by a ball cap leaned toward me. I tried not to recoil.
“Don’t sweat it, little girl. She don’t mean no harm.”
I looked at Glory, stretched out like a panther on a tree limb, blowing smoke up toward the bison head above her. “I guess not.”
“Drink yer beer. You’ll be alright.”
Two beers later, I was drunk. I used the length of the bar to find my way to the bathroom. The place was packed. Men and a few women sat crammed together on the benches and chairs. I took three steps and pushed my arm in between two men to grip the bar so I didn’t fall. One of the men spun around suddenly and knocked my knees out from under me. I fell in his lap, facing the bar, and my eyes landed on a plaque embedded in the wood in front of me.
“Whoa, lady,” he said, and picked me up by the elbows to right me. My eyes were still crossed from trying to read the plaque. This cracked him up. “Look at her eyes, Brad!”
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br /> “Jesus, how many drinks have you had?” Brad had a crooked grin. His short hair and beard made him look more deliberately scruffy than Bill and his friends. These two men had all their teeth, and I could smell aftershave or deodorant through their flannel shirts.
“Just two…or three…I think. Prob’ly not four…”
They smirked and kept me at the bar with the angles their legs made, their feet propped up on the stool legs.
“You don’t know? “ Brad looked down at me from under blond lashes.
“I’m not used to it.” I felt compelled to explain. “I’m nursing, so I don’t drink much.” All three of us looked at my breasts just as wet flowers blossomed over the nipples. “Oh shit,” I said, bringing both hands up to cover the leaks.
The men’s eyes went wide, and I knew this was something they’d never seen before. Under my horror I almost felt smug, like I’d pulled back a curtain, but shame seeped in fast and I pushed through their knees, fumbling for the sanctity of a toilet stall.
When Glory came into the bathroom, she found me turning my T-shirt around so the stains were on the back. My sports bra was next to the sink.
“I guess you sprung a leak. You didn’t mention you were still breastfeeding that baby.”
“Didn’t come up,” I mumbled, struggling to find the armholes in my shirt.
“Doesn’t matter. No one cares. Hey, are you having fun?” She pushed up close and sat on the counter.
I considered my options: I wasn’t having fun, so I could leave right now, go back to the bay and Danny and the tomorrows just like all the yesterdays, or I could stick this night out and see where it took me. “I should probably go home.”
“Why? We just got here.”
“I’ve got the baby at home and I’ve never left him before…”
“Jesus, it’s good you came out then, you deserve it. How old is he?”
“Eight months.”
“Christ! That’s a long time to be at home without going crazy! I was out a week after having my kid.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
Glory grimaced. She busied herself adjusting her clothes. “Yeah.” She stared at me. “But we’re not here to talk about kids, are we? We’re here to have fun. That’s why I’m here, you know, to make sure you have fun. That’s why we met. I think it was destiny.” She raised her arms above her head in a flourish and flicked her hair back. I laughed and listed a bit to the left.
“Hey, what’s that plaque on the bar?” I asked, shrugging back into my hooded sweatshirt and tucking my bra into one of the pockets.
“That’s Smokey’s. He died last year on the lake. Stupid fuck.” Glory turned to fix her hair in the mirror. She pushed it back from her face, but small curls sprung round to frame it in the damp of the bathroom. She was gorgeous. I couldn’t not look at her.
She took a lipstick out of her pocket and touched the end of it to the mirror, stroking a lascivious gash of colour through her face.
“Smokey,” she said, softly, while she drew. “He left me massive tips. I might have fucked him once in the grass out back, but he was a sorry, fat man with nothing besides his his boat. Didn’t surprise me when he died. Didn’t surprise anyone. Miss him like a bastard, though.” She turned her head to meet my eyes in the mirror. “I wrote a song about it. You wanna hear? I’ll add it to our set.”
The bathroom door banged shut behind her. I glanced back at myself in the mirror. In red, where Glory had been, a crude broken heart marred the mirror. My cheeks were scarlet and my eyes were glassy.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Glory was standing on a small stage under a stuffed eagle. She pulled her sweater over her head, and sloughed it off like a too-big, second skin. She reached for her guitar. Everyone’s eyes were on her. As she strapped on the guitar, I noticed movement among the tables in the far recesses of the pub. A woman, taller and sturdier than she was, but feline in the same way, wove between the tables toward the stage. Crystal stepped onto the stage and picked up a banjo. Their eyes met once, and I saw Glory’s lips move. Then Glory turned to the crowd. The first notes on the guitar were a plank her voice dove off.
There’s a bar stool at Edna’s
with a name on a plaque
of a lake-faring bastard
with a giant’s own laugh.
I’d buy your first pint
if you walked through the door,
but we don’t have to laugh
at your jokes anymore.
Crystal’s banjo leapt in to hold up Glory’s voice, and then suddenly, with a frisson of discord, her voice slid in underneath Glory’s. The banjo filled out the sound until it flooded the room. The way their voices held the notes, the way they glanced darts at one another, the way their voices twined like two silver cords, made my ears throb, and left an aching hole in my chest when they stopped singing. The chorus almost did me in. There was a deliberate fuck-you in the plainness of their music I’d never heard before.
Smokey, your laugh rolled right up to the roof.
It fell down on us sinners like god’s living proof.
You had faith in your barmaid and I don’t know why
but I loved you for laughing, you old, fat, hard-living dear,
of a laughing loud bastard, of a kind-hearted guy.
There’s a bar stool at Edna’s
with a letter-pressed plaque
for a lake-faring bastard
with a giant’s own laugh,
and though it’s a stool
with a helluva view,
no one sits there, Smokey,
’cause we save it for you.
“So, get the fuck off his stool, you pussy!” Glory yelled from the stage, and pointed to the men who’d laughed at me earlier. Brad was surprised and chuckled nervously, but when the crowd turned to him and rumbled in agreement, he and his pal paid for their beers and left. “That’s right,” Glory said, and pranged the guitar. “Now let’s rock out!” The crowd laughed and she strummed fast and wild, her hair all over the place. Crystal propped her banjo against the leg of a stool and lit a cigarette. She left it burning in an ashtray while she signalled the bartender for a drink. Glory settled into another song. Their voices rose like angels wrestling mid-flight, feathers flying everywhere, unsettling and divine.
I leaned on the wall with my fists balled against my legs, so full of want I felt nauseous. It wasn’t the songs I wanted. It wasn’t the beer, or the night out. Was it Glory? I didn’t know. I felt numb and alone at the back of the room. I glanced at a clock with a bikini model in it. Twelve thirty. The drunk hum in my head helped suppress thoughts of Danny and Thomas. I slumped down the wall until I sat on the floor. I watched Glory play and I sucked the sight and sound into me as tight as I could so the rest of the bar didn’t exist, just Glory, her ragged voice and wild hair, the potential of her friendship.
CHORUS
Bill Bowmann, Dream Beaver Pub
I’ll tell you about this lake. It’s a man-eater. Eats its fill, leaves the rest of us to tell about it. You’d believe it, you watch those storms come down the lake. It’s not even as big as some lakes, but it’s a killer.
First thing they teach you when you’re a baby: “You’re on the water when the water goes black, you get off, quicker’n quick.” I told my own kids that, and they told theirs. Someone should tell the newcomers, too.
While back, some fella from out east comes here for the fishing. And it’s good fishing, too—people been making their living off fishing here for a long time. He comes out here and tries his luck. Doesn’t have any the first day, so he rents a boat from me. Doesn’t have any the second day, neither, so he rents a bigger boat. Guys hanging around at the wharf say, “You gotta get a local to show you the good spots,” but this fella’s a big-shot fisherman, doesn’t need anybody to show him around. Goes out the third day and doesn’t come back. No sign of the boat, neither. Like someone just reached down and plucked them both up. His truck sat out front for a long time. Got it
towed eventually.
This lake is full of fools. Fools who wouldn’t listen. Fools who thought they could outrun a storm or outlast the water. Drunk fools. Dead fools.
The worst thing I ever heard was about those two kids that winter. When the ice is on the lake, and everyone’s out on their snow machines ripping around, I remember. Everyone remembers. It was just after Christmas. Those kids were party-hopping along the north shore, bonfire to bonfire, gunning their snow machines, racing. It was some bad winter—warm and then freezing cold—no one drove their trucks out on the ice that year. Those kids. They were in love. They were the kids you heard about even if you had no kids and didn’t care for teenagers. Those two, I picture them like Romeo and Juliet. Her hair whipping around, her arms holding him tight. Them taking off from the others.
Funny thing is, I always picture them flying, not falling, not sinking, or drowning, but like there was a cliff in the middle of the lake and they just drove off it. Disappeared into the stars.
I hate that story, but it stays with me. I went out with the search parties over New Year’s, but then I gave up. Didn’t want to find them. Rather picture her smiling into his back and the rumble of the snow machine underneath them, the two of them ripping up the clouds.
I been living on this lake longer’n anyone, almost. I watch the storms come down from Portage beat the living shit out of my shore, bend the trees in half, break my windows, sometimes. I respect this lake. I don’t ice-fish no more. I barely fish at all. I don’t go out if the sky looks weird, and sure as hell, if the water goes black, I head for shore. Batten down the hatches.
Glory Page 5