Provider's Son

by Lee Stringer

  But Alberta wasn’t the only place there was money. For some the crab fishery was downright lucrative. On the right boat a crew member at the crab fishery could easily make twenty thousand dollars in a month’s work. And if a seventeen-year-old crew member was making that kind of money you could imagine what the skipper was pulling in. But with three men, a mid-sized boat, and a small quota, which was how Levi and his brothers had operated, making the big bucks was not as easy. In fact it was impossible.

  And as easy as it was to be jealous of the crab skippers who made it rich, some even millionaires, Levi would not allow himself. Partly because of the satisfaction it gave him to smell the jealousy off some of the landsmen in Gadus. “The fishermen got it made,” was their favourite line — only when there wasn’t one in the room of course. He wondered which fishermen they were talking about? Those who were brave enough to stay in the tattered and mismanaged industry, or the thousands who were forced to find work elsewhere? And after five hundred years of poverty, if those that were left did have it a little easier, didn’t they deserve it?

  Levi stared down at his E.I. report card. Maybe this time he would phone it in. Dealing with one of those automatic voice machines didn’t thrill him, but he was getting annoyed with filling out his card and putting it in the mail. Frank claimed phoning it in was easy, but according to him everything was easy. Levi read the number on the report card and thought about it. If Frank could do it he could.

  Levi picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  A monotone female voice answered.

  — Hello, this is the Employment Insurance Call-In System. If you would like a demonstration of how the report card Call-in System works please press one. If you would like to go ahead and file your E.I. report please press two.

  Levi pressed two.

  — Please enter your Social Insurance Number followed by the pound sign.

  Levi cursed softly.

  “Anita.”

  “Anita!”

  “What!”

  “Whats my Social Insurance Number?”

  — Please enter your Social Insurance Number followed by the pound sign.

  “What?”

  “My Social Insurance Number?”

  She yelled out his number.

  — Your allotted time is over. Good-bye.

  “Goddamn it.”

  Levi started over again and when he was asked to type in his Social Insurance Number he did but didn’t press the pound key. He moaned and tried again.

  — Please enter your Access Code followed by the pound key.

  “What the hell is my Access Code?” Levi shouted into the phone.

  “Its written on the tear-away part that was attached to your report card,” Anita shouted from their bedroom.

  Levi scrambled over to the kitchen table to get the report card, but he remembered that he had already thrown the tear away part in the garbage. As he ran for the garbage the monotone voice told him his time was up.

  “You bitch.”

  “What did you call me?” Anita shouted.

  “Im not talking to you.”

  “Oh, youre talking to a machine.”

  “Thats right. Even a recording is a pain in the ass when its a woman.”

  “Asshole.”

  “One more time,” he said through clenched teeth, fishing through the garbage.

  He managed to enter his Access Code and actually get to the report questions.

  — Answer yes or no to the following questions. One represents yes, Nine represents no. After you answer the question your answer will be repeated to make sure it is correct.

  — Did you work during the period of this report; including work for which you will be paid for later, unpaid work or self employment? Levi pressed one.

  — You answered ‘yes’ you did work during the period of this report. Is this correct?

  Levi groaned and hit nine.

  — You answered ‘no.’ I will repeat the question. Did you work during the period of this report?

  Levi pressed nine.

  — You answered ‘no,’ you did not work during the period of this report. Is this correct?

  Levi pressed one.

  — Did you start a full time job during the period of this report? Levi pressed nine for no. The voice repeated his answer and he entered that it was correct.

  — Did you attend school or a training course during the period of this report?

  Levi pressed nine for no.

  — Were you ready, willing, and capable or working each day?

  Levi held his finger over nine for a second, almost accidentally telling the truth, then checked himself and pressed one. He was ready and capable, but he wasn’t willing. Work would take away from his woodworking. The machine repeated his reply.

  — Did you, or will you receive money other than already reported in question one?

  Levi pressed nine. The machine repeated his answer.

  — Your report is now complete. If you wish to hang up you may now do so.

  Levi hung up with a loud sigh and hoped he did everything right.

  The truth about setting up his own rocking chair enterprise was that he felt he was too slow building them. Besides, no one around would pay the kind of money he wanted for his pieces. He didn’t even realize they were “pieces” until he heard an American tourist call them that. She and her husband had pulled into his driveway in what looked to be a house on wheels, looking for directions to Dryden’s Whale Tours. Her license plate said Texas, The Lone Star State. As Levi was explaining the directions the lady peeped into his shed and put her hand on her chest.

  “My Lord,” she drawled. “Did yall make that? That is a beautiful piece.”

  It was a rocking chair Levi had completed the year before. After he told her yes her next question was, “How much?” For a joke he replied three thousand dollars. Then to his utter amazement he found himself negotiating with her. When they finally settled on twenty-five-hundred Levi realized that as astonished as he was that she was actually willing to pay that amount, parting with the chair wasn’t easy. There was so much of him that went into every rocking chair he made, and to see someone take it away was like losing a small part of himself.

  That was almost ten years ago. The rocking chair she had bought was half as good as the chairs he could make now. The problem was that it took him weeks to complete one. He had sold a few for far less than they were worth. The rest he either kept, or gave to family and friends.

  To be able to support himself financially building chairs was a dream, but without the fishery, the fastest way he could see to make money in the real world was out west. He liked the idea of working twenty on and eight off, like his daughter. According to her everything was accommodated. Not exactly five star, but accommodated none the less. It sounded like a good deal to him, if Anita was willing to go twenty days without seeing him. He had a feeling it wouldn’t break her heart.

  Levi went back into the bedroom. Anita glanced up at him and he felt he was intruding on something. Intruding in his own bedroom.

  “We needs money,” he said.

  “I already told you I was done talking about that bill.”

  Levi clenched his teeth. “I was thinking the best way to pay it off is to try and find a job out west.”

  “Sounds good,” she said, not looking away from the screen.

  “Im just not sure what Id do out there,” he said. “I got that welding course when they shut the fishery down, but...Christ, Ive only worked on the boat at it. I never did log any hours.”

  Anita laughed. Levi thought she was laughing at what he said, until he looked over and saw her lost in the computer. She was barely listening. He reached forward and pushed the laptop screen down so that it snapped together with the keyboard, nearly catching her fingers.

  “Can you look at me for a few seconds?”

  “No,” she said, and in her eyes he saw a terrible distance. He felt himself weaken.

  “Whats wr
ong?” Levi said, sitting beside her and putting his hand on her leg. She moved it away. He moved closer to her, putting his hand on the inside of her thigh, and up under the laptop.

  “You got to be joking,” she said, shoving his hand away.

  “Its been close on three weeks,” he said.

  “Levi...”

  “What?”

  “Was Sinead’s number on the phone?”

  “Thats not what you were going to say. What were you going to say?”

  “What would you do if you didnt have me?”

  “I depends on you for some things and you depends on me for some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jesus...thats a nice thing to say.”

  “Seriously, what do I need you for? Im not saying it in a bad way, or to be sarcastic. I wants you to tell me.”

  He squirmed up close to her and put his arm around her. “You dont need to be cruel now. We haves a scattered row but we always gets over it.”

  “We dont fight anymore.”

  “No, thats true. We dont fight like we used to. Thats a good thing aint it?”

  Anita scoffed.

  Levi tried to move closer. “I dont like the way youre getting on.”

  Anita opened the laptop up again.

  “Im just in a bad mood, Levi.”

  “I loves you,” Levi said.

  “Did I show you Sineads latest pictures?” Anita said, clicking on her daughter’s Facebook page, and opening the picture album, Keep On Rocking In The Tar Sands. Sinead’s smiling face popped up on the screen with two young men on each side of her with their arms around her shoulders.

  “She better mind herself out there,” Levi said. “I wonders sometimes if she should be even out there with all the men thats in them camps.”

  “She works with the two of them young fellas,” Anita said.

  “I dont care who she works with — she better mind herself.”

  “Shes not stupid. I dont think we needs to worry,” Anita said, and clicked on the next picture. This one was of Sinead and a lady old enough to be her mother singing karaoke at the camp bar.

  “All Im saying is that she better be careful. Theres probably fifty men for every woman in them camps.”

  “If she works with safety she must know how to deal with men. And by the way, can you find some way to convince your mother that shes safe? She haves me drove off the head calling and asking about her. Why dont she just call Sinead instead of calling me?”

  “She says she dont know the time difference.”

  “Sure I told her a half a dozen times its three and a half hours.”

  “You knows what Mom is like, Anita.”

  Anita clicked on the next picture. In this one she was kissing a native man on the cheek.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “I didnt see this one,” Anita said. “She must have put it up lately.”

  “He looks like a Indian,” Levi said. “Did she say she was going out with anybody the last time you was talking to her?”

  “Said she was dating a artist, but she didnt say he was a Indian. She dont tell me nothing sure. Like pulling teeth when Im talking to her.”

  “I hope hes not a drunk like most of them.”

  “He dont look like hes a hard case.”

  Levi wasn’t sure. The native wore a button-up black shirt that made his dark complexion look ever darker. And even though he was smiling it was an ironic smile, mocking almost. He was too handsome. That was the problem. Levi didn’t trust men that were too handsome.

  “Sinead is too smart for that though,” Levi said.

  Anita looked at him, then back at the computer and shook her head. “Sometimes I thinks shes too smart for her own good.”

  “Where did she get her brains to?”

  Anita clicked through to another picture. This one was of an attractive female bartender serving a Corona with a piece of lime stuck in the top. She was licking her tongue out at the camera. It was tagged with the name “Caprice.”

  The next picture was of the whole bar. It was packed and looked to have at least two hundred people. Ninety percent of which were men.

  “Im going to phone Sinead about working out west,” Levi said.

  “Youve been saying youre going to go up there for years.”

  “Im not going to have much other choice is I? Maybe Sinead can help me. Im sure she knows all the management.”

  “So what would you do?”

  “I already told you if youd been paying attention. Welding. At least its something I got a little bit experience in. I did all the welding on the boat.” Levi put his head on his wife’s shoulder. “Now, seriously, whats we going to do about the credit card bill?”

  “You just gave yourself the answer didnt you?”

  “Thats if everything goes to plan.”

  “When did anything ever go to plan for us?”

  Virtual Infidelity

  The next day as Levi sat on his stool staring at three long blocks of maple he was still disturbed by how cold Anita had been the night before. Her indifference lingered like a bad smell, and it was distracting his focus. Focus that he needed to find the perfect grain to fit the rest of the rocking chair. He was only now just realizing what she meant when she said, “we dont fight anymore.” Fighting meant you cared, and lately when they argued she always seemed to be the first to give in. That was not like her. All she wanted to do lately was get away from him and back to the computer. The one thing they did continue to do, however, was bicker. Where did she get the patience to keep getting angry about him leaving his boots in the doorway? After all their years together were there not some things about him she could just accept? He remembered his mother and father bickering but he couldn’t remember so much resentment in their voices as seemed to be in Anita’s and his. His father had died from a heart attack years ago, and now that his mother, Delilah, was alone in her house, she said she wished she had someone except herself to argue with.

  Levi tried to focus again. Like every piece in a rocking chair, the grain in the runner must flow with the grain in the legs so that there is balance, as if the pieces could have been placed together in no other way. And each runner must be a reflection of the other to create the perfect literal balance and rocking motion that involves a minimum of effort for the person in the chair.

  There were two rocking chairs in Levi’s house. One for Anita, and one for himself. Each chair had been specifically designed for their bodies. If Anita sat in Levi’s rocking chair her feet would rise from the floor too early as it rocked backwards. If Levi sat in Anita’s chair his feet would barely rise from the floor at all. Most people didn’t even know what it was like to sit in a personally crafted rocking chair. Most that were sold in stores did not even have support for the lower back, or “lumbar support” as the woodworking magazines called it.

  Unlike many marriages in Levi and Anita’s generation in the outport of Gadus, pregnancy had not been the deciding factor. In fact, Sinead had not come along until seven years after the wedding. Not because they weren’t trying. One day Levi came home and found Anita with puffy eyes. Tears of happiness. Up until then Levi had been building tables and chairs, but that day he put aside all his other projects and started to build his first rocking chair. A month later when he finished he could not help but be impressed by his work.

  Like most men Levi had hoped for a boy, but when he walked into the delivery room and saw the little girl all that was forgotten. He had discovered unconditional love, mixed with the confused awe of realizing there had been a real human being in that belly all along, and not his mental conception of one.

  A few years later he begged Anita to let him build her a new rocking chair and throw away the old one because of all the flaws he noticed, but she wouldn’t consider it. He could not really blame her; she had spent hours in the rocking chair during the pregnancy, and even more after Sinead was born. She was a colicky baby and that chair was the only place where s
he would go to sleep. The truth was Sinead had probably become attached to it before she was born. Whenever she began kicking her mother’s ribcage Anita would sit in her rocking chair with her hand on her belly and lull the little one back to sleep. Sinead had known the rhythm of the chair before she knew the world.

  Levi placed his hand on one of the blocks of wood and gave it a last visual study. He brought it to his table and traced out a rough sketch of the runner on the side with a white crayon. After cutting out the rough shape with the band saw he went to work with his hand file. He was still surprised that he had gotten so angry as to break the first finished leg. That was a level of rage he had not felt in a long time. Woodworking usually relaxed him, and the more relaxed he became the better work he did. Outside his shed he had no patience, but in his shed he had the “patience of Job,” as his mother would say.

  The laptop, that was where it had started. Levi had given it to Anita the previous Christmas because she had been talking about buying one for months. Everyone was talking about this new website called Facebook, and she wanted to get in on it too. He had no idea she would become so addicted to it. He thought her interest in the computer would be a fad, like everything else. The last one was the gym. Before that it was scrapbooking. Before that she had wanted to help him at woodworking. That, however, had been something different.

  She practically begged him to teach her, and it seemed like a great idea. Wife and husband working side by side, building beautiful furniture, and chatting over supper about new designs and fine woods. In general he didn’t consider women to be handy, but a few things she had helped him with over the years showed him that she had potential. He could have started her off on a simple foot stool. The problem was that his first apprentice, his nephew David, had died, and after that it depressed him to even consider anyone else. Yet he couldn’t express this to Anita. The longer they were together, somehow, the harder it was to express to her anything deep about himself, to show any kind of vulnerability. He still had a picture of David in his wallet, and sometimes, right in the middle of a project, he would stop whatever he was doing and take it out and stare at it.