Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  Leonard tilted his head at the platter and what was left of the nose. The stew had actually been good, and lots got eaten, same with the cheese-curd pies, with their cranberry relish. But though people put on a brave front with the nose, Andy had spotted most of it in the garbage.

  “So,” Leonard said to the half-nose that was left, “that’s Micmac medicine?”

  “Yes. I think so.” It was properly pronounced Meekmah, but Andy kept mum. You don’t tell a Texan about their Alamo. “For the French, anyway.”

  At this, Leonard plucked the brandy bottle from the pot, uncapped it, and took a quick pull. Rachel Hedley laughed, “Excuse me?” and Leonard, calmly smoothing back his ponytail and dangling feather, said without looking at her, “No worries, antiseptic.” His niece stood beside him staring into space, perhaps listening but likely not. She had a bovine’s contentment, and it looked like any company would do.

  Leonard turned, again businesslike, to Andy. “So, eating a fish alive is a cure for —?”

  Andy put a comic finger to his lips, because the sturgeon was still supposed to be a secret. He said, “Global warming.” Somehow he meant it, too, he didn’t know quite how, and his smile probably conveyed the opposite, so he added, “I’m almost serious.”

  “I know. This is kind of fun.” Leonard indicated with a sweep of his hand the kitchen and beyond, to the whole party.

  “It’s actually a cure for depression.” Andy shrugged to tell him that he was serious about this one.

  “How does that work, exactly?”

  “Eating a nose sort of jostles you.” In the good fire of the moment, no problem can live.

  “And eating a live, rare —?”

  “They aren’t so rare, they just aren’t caught much around here.” The sturgeon, the noble hermit grandfather of all fish. The one in the mudroom, Andy knew, was a green sturgeon. Smaller and less tasty than its big white cousin to the south.

  “But, that’s it?”

  “I think so.” And walls come down between one breath and another.

  Rachel Hedley was waggling a finger in Andy’s face.

  “So, am I understanding it right, that Leonard got you a moose, and a sturgeon, and that both are, what, out of season?”

  “Well, I don’t know if there’s —”

  Leonard interrupted. “A moose nose. The moose was hunted, dead, butchered, and on its way to its new home in the freezer. The nose would have been thrown away.”

  “Still, the Native, you know, the Native fishery isn’t supposed to be —”

  “Or used for dog food. Sometimes —”

  “— it’s supposed to be for Natives only, so —”

  “Sometimes —” Leonard tilted himself at Rachel in a way Andy didn’t like the looks of.

  “— dey freeze the nose and the guts too, eh? Dey freeze the cocks and the tits, and the egg hoops and de shit hoops, freeze ’er up for de dogs, eh? Especially if dey got a friend with doze sled dogs. Cock’s a fuckin’ steak to doze sled dogs.”

  “Fine,” said Rachel, unperturbed. “It’s bad enough that it’s poached, out of season —”

  “You’ll have to stop saying that.” Leonard drew himself to his full height. He sucked in his gut and out came his chest, and Andy couldn’t tell if he was fooling around. It was one of the times Leonard might not know either. “I am a status Indian. There are no hunting seasons. We take food for our survival. We take it when we need it.”

  “Leonard. Come on. You have a business. You have an SUV outside. Those are — Look at those shoes you’re wearing.”

  “Are you saying I don’t have a right to —”

  “You know as well as I do you’re allowed to hunt and fish but you’re not allowed to sell it to white man here”— she jerked her head Andy’s way —“and when you say ‘survival’ it burns me a little when I think of, oh, I don’t know, just a few people in Africa to whom that word actually applies.”

  It was an impressive display, and because neither Leonard nor Rachel had raised their voices or twitched even an eyebrow in anger, their audience felt safe to merely nod, or adopt an expression that weighed the questions.

  Magda, laughing lightly, said, “Here’s a different thing. I’m a vegetarian? So, for me, everything alive is ‘out of season.’ So pooh-pooh on both of you.”

  “Anyway,” said Leonard, smiling easily, nodding to Rachel, “point taken. But please also take my point, which is that I mean ‘survival of culture.’ Okay?” He didn’t wait for Rachel’s response but turned briefly to Magda. “And pooh-pooh taken.”

  “But you know,” said Magda, to Andy now, “if that sturgeon is really fifty years old, just think for a second.”

  “It’s thirty-nine,” said Andy.

  “You know how much metal’s sitting in that thing? Mercury? What else is up here? Lead? Aluminum!”

  Leonard looked at Andy too. “Jesus, she’s right.”

  Magda said to Leonard, “You don’t eat the big old halibut, right?”

  Leonard was shaking his head. “We’ve actually been warning customers when they get one over forty, fifty pounds. And they’re nowhere near fifty years old.” He laughed. “And neither are the halibut!” He grabbed for the brandy bottle but yanked his hand back because it was too hot.

  It was all the out Andy needed. He didn’t want his garbage can full of raw uneaten sturgeon in the morning, he really wouldn’t be able to bear that. He pictured the sturgeon’s gnomish face and gentle ways. Though wasn’t the spirit of sacrifice about love, and loss? Didn’t you have to kill and waste something?

  They got the brandy cooled down enough to serve. Out in the living room, when everyone had a drink in hand, after a toast thanking Andy for his party, and then a sadder toast, from Pauline to Laura over the loss of her mom but also to welcome her back for this brief time — Andy announced the imminent release of a live sturgeon back into its ocean home.

  BECAUSE LOTS OF PEOPLE wanted to go down to the beach and because the storm was worse than when they’d arrived, Andy went to the attic for parkas and rain-gear he thought were stashed there. He climbed to the second floor, and in the hallway pulled down the collapsible, spring-loaded ladder. And here was Laura, at his side.

  “Where you off to?”

  Her cheeks were flush with wine and she looked forgetful of anything dire in her life. It was like she had, as of now, decided to enjoy herself. And it was the closest she had come, so far, to looking eighteen again.

  “I’m getting coats and stuff. Attic.” His pointed his chin at the ladder, which he’d already pulled halfway down.

  “Can I help?”

  He said sure, and was instantly excited. They were going up to the attic together, and Laura couldn’t not remember, as well as he did, every detail of that time. As he followed her up the ladder, face a foot from her jeans, he got so excited that he was a bit worried for himself. It meant nothing, she was merely helping. Her daughter was bored a floor below them and her mother had just died, he was an idiot. And there was no way in the world he could let himself make some putridly lame move on her once they were alone up here and — But here she was pulling the spring-loaded trapdoor up behind them and closing it.

  “Shut the noise out,” she said, and when she turned to him her little smile dropped. “It’d be nice to say hi to each other. We haven’t really done that. You have a minute?”

  “Sure do.”

  Her eyes were Laura’s eyes but set in a wider, more experienced face. Her smile was a little professional, maybe. Her breasts were perfect wonders, under a fuzzy sweater that would feel like the belly fur of some baby mammal.

  Andy opened his arms to her, said, “Can I?” Her lack of hesitation was thrilling, as Laura met his step forward with one of her own and they were hugging.

  He could feel her, her moderate pressure answering his, along the length of his body. It was all he could do not to try taking things further.

  “It’s a weird time, isn’t it?” Andy whispered.
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  “I’m an orphan.”

  Andy didn’t try to imagine how that might be for her. He could only revel in the hug that might be the only time they touched, and might be over any instant.

  He said after a moment, “I hope the party’s okay. Sorry it’s a little goofy. Considering it’s . . .”

  “It’s a perfect distraction.”

  Andy held on a moment more, but the hug had gone overripe. He sighed “okay,” and he broke the hug himself, leaning back but keeping his hands on her shoulders.

  “What?” Laura asked. It must have been on his face.

  “Pauline told me you’re leaving Wednesday.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you. I sort of chickened out.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t meet his eye. “Sorry.”

  “Were you just going to leave?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that — You had expectations, Andy.”

  “Maybe some. Sure.”

  “Well, no, you did. And so did I. I mean, I was going to be here. You were going to be here. We were going to test the waters.” She flicked a hand between her stomach and his.

  If you’re stuck in Hicksville, might as well test a local yokel. He almost said this. Maybe he still would.

  “But now I’m free to live where Amelia lives, and she’s . . . Especially now, she’s by far the most important thing in my life. I’m sorry, but . . .” Sorry but, childless, you couldn’t understand and I won’t even try to explain. We who play the children card never have to.

  “But you can visit.” Laura placed her hands where, before his diet, his love handles used to be. He could see in her face her enthusiasm. “Andy, really — you could visit.”

  “And test the waters?”

  “Yeah.”

  So he went in for the kiss. She saw him coming and wasn’t moving away. And he was astonished by what was coming, the finality of it: in seconds he would know his entire future. The feel of a kiss would bring their worlds together, or seal something cold.

  WITH THE EXCEPTION of the older women, who wished them well, almost the entire party bundled up for the release of the big fish. They had four flashlights between them and followed Andy, Leonard, and Drew, who laboured under the long cooler and its load of water and sturgeon. Young Alex was instructed to light the ground just before their feet so they could see where to step, and not twenty seconds went by before Leonard had to bark again at the boy for his inattentive beam.

  As they neared the edge of his lawn and the start of the path down, Andy shouted over a gust of wind to Laura, “There’s the corner of yard I lost.”

  The makeshift rock and root steps were slow going, but they made the beach. Alex lifted the lid and shone his flashlight in while the three men caught their breath. The fierce wind and thigh-high crashing waves made the dark gravel beach feel unwelcome, even dangerous, and though that was only an illusion, it forced an urgency on things and made the ceremony a quick one. Andy had his own reasons for haste: in the mudroom when he took a look at the sturgeon he noticed it starting to loll, indiscriminately to one side then the other, belly up, and he knew enough about fish to understand it was almost dead. He saw Leonard watching it too and they met eyes.

  “Ceremony” wasn’t really the word for it. The three men, helped by the religiously stoned teenagers James and Chris, who looked frantic, almost weepy in their helping, walked the cooler into the building waves and lowered it down, almost submerging it. And then they carefully pulled and punched the cooler apart. Hunks of broken Styrofoam bobbed around them, and as Alex yelped and ran up to get in some kicks himself, all the others took up a simple chant of “Good, bye, old, fish!” Andy saw that many of them had refilled their brandies to bring along.

  When there were no longer any sides to the cooler, and the sturgeon was given a hand to move it forward, and another to show it how to move its tail, the fish of its own accord swam lethargically out of flashlight beam into instant darkness. The chant held up for another ten seconds and stopped as soon as it began to fade. Waves hitting him to the waist, chanting simply “Fish! Fish!” in a small voice barely heard above the wind, Alex stood pitching rocks in the fish’s general direction until Leonard tugged him gently ashore by the hand.

  The party made its way back up the short path. The brief and minimal shelter of trees felt like a haven and the wind malevolent. It was exactly this kind of night, a tryst between high wind and a tide that would peak in an hour or so, that had gouged Andy’s yard and toppled trees. Trudging the slope, he felt almost overcome, not so much drunk as exhausted, but he lacked the energy to care about his yard; he had thoughts about it but no feeling. The memory of his bed, the imagined smell and feel of his pillow, almost had him asleep as he walked.

  He sensed rather than saw Drew’s hooded head approach from behind. His friend didn’t seem all that drunk, but Drew pressed his forehead against Andy’s temple and then a little hiss, “So you get lucky up there?”

  Did he get lucky up there? He wasn’t sure if the word applied. He still wasn’t clear on what had happened. In one sense, it simply fit this colourful night, adding to its choreography. Another wonky crescendo. Did he get lucky? Laura did meet him halfway in his grotesque lurch at her, going in for his kiss. All he’d really needed was that kiss, and for it to reveal what he had to know. Even her refusing to kiss back would have done that job perfectly well. What he didn’t want was another question mark. He didn’t want lips that left him uncertain. He was ready for her to turn her head away, even — he was ready for that final cheek.

  But he was also ready to be met halfway, and he was. He could feel her equal passion, and the unconfident, searching vigour in her lips. Lips are sweetest when unsure. Ah, it made him happy, to be kissing her like before. This would have been enough. Because then it grew mostly awkward to be tugging down each other’s pants, Andy wondering if her urge in this was still equal. They were both smiling and even laughing a bit, whispering, “This is amazing, isn’t it?” like they had on the drive in from the airport, but they weren’t laughing or smiling as honestly it seemed, there was a dark eye on the whole transaction and he knew something wasn’t getting said; but then they were on the floor in the heap of coats Andy hastily flung down. It was against the wall opposite to where they last had been, on that pile of carpets, removed years ago now, and this time Laura didn’t take off her sweater.

  Andy still hadn’t answered Drew, who just now prodded him in the back with a knuckle, wanting one.

  “Yeah, right,” Andy said, turning to give him the side of his face and what he hoped was a defeated smile.

  Did he get lucky? It was amazing, his body some kind of automatic animal, taut yet fluid in everything it did, all its hungers being met, beautiful, what feels better in life? She even smelled as before, wine and venison and flowers, which almost made it end too quickly. Even as he took businesslike steps to distract himself, directing his attention to the wood grain and imperfections of the plywood floor, he shook his head, though maybe not physically, at the low comic irony of making love with Laura at last yet trying to think of other things! It was something he would tell her about later, because it was the kind of thing they could talk about, and this as much as anything else was why he’d always loved her. He asked her then, feeling both businesslike and also profound, if he could come inside her, and she said “sure can,” and maybe it was this that sobered him, her easy way of saying it, maybe meaning she was on the pill, but in any case implying that his coming inside her was of no consequence. It used to be such a problem for them, an urgent concern always, and met with cobbled-together precautions. But of course a long-married woman would have found a stable answer for conception. For most people out there the problem maybe wasn’t profound. In fact for other people sex itself was maybe not that profound. Other people, they had affairs to escape its routine, to find some shock and profundity again. How many affairs had Laura had? Her “sure can” maybe said something about her social life.
For lots of people sex was probably just complicated entertainment. Maybe, for dancers, it was a post-rehearsal cool-down, casual, while taking sips from their tinted plastic water bottles. Laura, he knew so little about her, her details — But his evidence was flimsy and unfair and, mostly, what was he doing in daydreams about Laura now?

  He got out of his thoughts and found his animal pleasure again. They kept making love, gently rocking in the coats he would soon be bringing down for his Order of Good Cheer guests to wear to the beach. Tom Waits was roaring through the floorboards, almost like Drew’s sent message. Chest on chest with her, he could feel the difference she feared, the ordinary flatness of her right breast versus the lack of give on her left side, the inhuman foam, and he could feel her awareness of it, an awareness that probably rarely left her, and he could also glimpse in this her fear, and her humiliation at being mortal. Up here in the attic, Laura was letting him know her again and it was heaven for this. What wasn’t heaven, what wasn’t lucky, was his certain sense that Laura was holding something back, was keeping a part closed to him. Even if she didn’t know it herself. It wasn’t physical, it felt bigger and more certain than that. What she was keeping closed to him was her future. He could feel that, for Laura, this gesture in his attic was an act of punctuation. This was another kind of death to take care of here in Prince Rupert. He could feel it, was certain of it: moving under him, rejoining him in their world of pleasure, after eighteen years, this was, finally, her proper goodbye.