Or why not a food theme? Starting in Cheesecake, New Jersey, and zigzagging southward, stopping off in Ham Lake, Sandwich, Hot Coffee, Oniontown, Sugar City, Bacon, Oatmeal, Picnic, Chocolate Bayou, Goodfood, and ending up, of course, in Florida, at Two Egg, where we’d get drunk in some neighbourhood bar while we worked up the courage to point out that “Egg” was missing an “s.”
But we knew, even as we talked, that it was all just hot air, that we’d never set foot in Lizard Lick or Aztec Lodge. As ridiculous as it might seem to you, we’d come to believe that our business rightfully belonged to the Smucker family. We’d feel as though we were betraying them if we blew them off to go and hang out with rednecks in Tortilla Flat. In any case, we might well spend a chunk of cash going to Saint-Côme or doing cultural activities in La Tuque, but I bet once we reached Lancaster County we’d think we’d put enough tarmac between us and the Grand-Mère rock.
Ò...26...Ò
Steve
Coming out of Gambrinus, we decided to walk back to the car via Des Forges, just to change things up. That’s how we came to walk by Gosselin Photo’s window display, where the same idea came to us both at the same time: you can’t go on holiday without a camera.
You’re probably going to ask what we were up to in Des Forges; you’ll be thinking that you’ve completely lost track of what’s going on, but don’t worry, it’s all deliberate: from the next paragraph, I’m going to be doing what’s known as a flashback. I’ll pick up where we were and I’ll tell you everything that happened leading up to our trip to Gosselin Photo. There’s nothing magical about it, it’s a standard literary technique, it avoids the monotony of a strictly linear narrative and gives the reader the illusion that the text has a structure, that it is constructed. Mr. Fisher recommends that beginning authors do not try this route, but with nearly 120 pages under my belt I can hardly still be considered a beginner.
For weeks, nothing much happened. As soon as we had a few dollars to spend, we converted them into gas and set off on a trip. For example, if, after emptying our pockets, raiding the piggybank, and taking back our returnable bottles, we gathered together $17.46, we headed to Olco, looked the gas-station guy in the eye, and, without batting an eyelid, said to him, “Put in $17.46 of regular, please.” Then we’d have a little discussion about how far we could get with that amount of petrol. “With eighteen bucks’ worth of gas, I reckon we could make it to Lac-aux-Sables and back.”
“I think that’s a bit conservative, man. I reckon we could get as far as Rivière-à-Pierre, no trouble.”
“Maybe at a push, but it’d be no bad thing to save a bit of petrol for our day-to-day errands.”
“That’s true. Lac-aux-Sables it is.”
We knew we really should have been putting money aside. After paying for the car, which had cost us $2,000 more than we planned, we had exactly six thousand left to finance our trip. The obvious solution was to shorten our stay, but we refused to go that route. Instead, we decided to revise our estimates downward. I said above that a room for two at the Bird-in-Hand Family Inn would cost $127.65. However, a single room would only come to $98.79, a saving of almost thirty dollars a day. Jude has trouble sleeping in the same bed as me because apparently I fidget a lot in my sleep, but he’ll have to manage for a few weeks. And when I said it would cost us $250 a day (including accommodation) to live, I was counting eating out three times a day, but I realize I was inflating things somewhat. Some mornings we can easily have a loaf of bread and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and buy something at the grocery store for lunch. Or just gobble a sandwich and a Mars bar from a vending machine. Basically, if we agree to not be too precious about it, we can easily get by with a $150 a day.
In fact, the only thing worrying us about the trip is this: what are we going to do with Steve? But before diving into this question, I really ought to introduce you to Steve.
When we met him, he was walking along the edge of the 155, at the Grandes-Piles exit, towards Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac. To this day, we still don’t know if he was actually planning to head all the way to Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac, but that would have been a ludicrous ambition: the fact that he could walk at all was pretty astounding. He was staggering all over the road so much that we had to slow down and veer over the yellow line to avoid him. Someone driving any faster might not have spotted him in time. “Hey, what’s that?”
“I would have said a hyena, but I don’t think there are any hyenas around here. A coyote maybe?”
“No, it was white with spots. I think it was just a rather unattractive dog.”
“Perhaps we should help it…”
We parked the Monte Carlo in the Auto HiFi car park and walked back toward the animal. We told ourselves it was a lost cause, that he’d run off into the woods when he saw us, but maybe he’d let us get close and, if he was wearing a tag, we could phone his house so he could get home. He didn’t flee when he saw us, he simply continued his laborious trotting toward Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac without glancing at us. He wasn’t trying to snub us; I think it was more that his instincts were telling him that the next time he stopped might be the last. He had enough energy to keep moving, but he knew he’d never manage to overcome inertia again. What Jude had said was right: he was in fact a rather unattractive dog. In general shape he resembled a hare, but his genetic background must have included DNA from all possible canine species, except perhaps the Saint Bernard. His head was a bit like a collie’s, but with the halfwitted eyes of a chihuahua and a muzzle like that of my cousin Karine’s dog, a hideous Chinese crested called Marius. His ribs jutted out under his coat, a greyish-white speckled with black and brown spots. He was so thin that it was a bit of a stretch to talk of him as a three-dimensional being. We waited until he reached us and then fell into step behind him. I asked him all the usual questions in my most reassuring voice: “Who does this good little doggy belong to? What’s doggy’s name? Where’s his house?” The answers to the questions were obvious (“Nobody,” “I haven’t got a name,” “What’s a house?”), but Caesar (the guy from The Dog Whisperer) claims that dogs can understand voice inflections. I wouldn’t swear that I’d managed to earn his trust, but when we got back to Auto HiFi and I invited him to jump into the car, he only hesitated for a few seconds (the time it took to say to himself, “What have I got to lose?”) before dragging himself, in all his pain and misery, onto the back seat.
We did a U-turn and went to the grocery store on Boulevard Ducharme in Grandes-Piles to buy some dog food. We picked up two cans of Dr. Ballard’s (not the real one, the Compliments sort, I don’t think Dr. Ballard’s exists anymore), which the woman at the till was kind enough to open for us, and a Journal de Montréal to use as a plate. We served it to him that way, unceremoniously, in the car park. He started stuffing his face, looking worriedly all around, unsettled by the idea that nobody was coming to fight him for his feast. Once the last bite had been swallowed, he waited a few hopeful seconds for a second serving and then, seeing that none was forthcoming, got back in the car. We could see he was still hungry, but since it’s not a good idea to overfill the stomach after fasting we ignored his imploring looks and set off.
We’d been driving in silence for five minutes when Jude asked, “So, what are we doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should give him a ride to the SPCA in Trois-Rivières. I think that’s the nearest branch.”
“If we take him to the SPCA they’ll put him in a cage, and two weeks later they’ll gas him. If that’s our plan, we might as well just have left him to croak at the side of the road.”
“Someone might adopt him.”
“Have you actually looked at him? He’s a nightmare on four legs. Nobody’s going to adopt him.”
“So what should we do then?”
“Well…”
“You want to keep him?”
“Um…”
“We’re no
t allowed to have pets, it’s in our lease.”
“It’s in every lease, but I don’t think Mrs. Rheault would grumble about it. She’ll never even know anyway.”
“You’re right, but…”
“But?”
“A dog is a responsibility. It’s a living thing that will rely on us for its survival and well-being. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Fucksake! We need every penny to keep ourselves alive. But what choice do we have? If we’d gone with our first idea of driving through Saint-Jean-des-Piles, we’d never have come across him and he’d probably have died before sunset.”
“Yeah, why did we have to go farting around in Saint-Jacques-des-Piles?”
“We need to give him a name.”
“We do indeed. Any ideas?”
“Hmm… No, but it should be something pretty wretched, pitiful, to match his appearance. Definitely not the name of an emperor or some mythological figure.”
“What do you think of Steve? That’s like the most loser name in the world. Go on, try and name one Steve who’s succeeded in life.”
“Steve McQueen, Steve Jobs, Steve Yzerman…”
“They’re anglophones. But you must admit that in Quebec there’s nothing more uncool than a Steve. It’s usually people on welfare who give their children American names.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And he really does look like a Steve.”
“Shall we go with Steve then?”
“Let’s go with Steve!”
Ò...27...Ò
Justine Has a Huge Ass
(Because I Keep My Promises)
Even with the windows open, the air in the car quickly became unbearable. It smelled kind of like that greenish juice that oozes out of dumpsters. There was no question of him setting foot in our place before just a teensy bit of freshening up. We stopped at my mother’s house. While Jude herded Steve into the yard, I went to the bathroom to get shampoo, a towel, and an exfoliating mitt. André, my mum’s husband, rushed over to find out what I was up to. “We’re washing our dog.” Torn between the distress our intrusion was causing him and his desire to seem cool, he simply pointed out that “Sylvie won’t be superhappy when she sees you’ve used her exfoliating mitt and clean towel on a dog.” I conceded the point and went out to rejoin Jude and Steve.
Steve didn’t seem to particularly enjoy the stream of cold water, but he didn’t run off; he waited stoically until it was over, gazing at us with his big, sad eyes, as if to say, “I was starting to believe that you might be good people, and now you’re doing this to me. But fine, it’s just so much like everything else that I can’t even say I’m disappointed,” or maybe that’s just me overanalyzing. I gave him a good shampoo, rubbed him down with the exfoliating mitt, sponged him properly, and then went to throw away all the stuff we’d used during his bath while he tried to dry off in the sun.
Before we went home, we stopped by the veterinary clinic on the corner of Sixth and Eighth to pick up a big bag of Orijen brand dog food, two bowls, a collar, a leash, a hide bone, and a big cushion. Total: $72.85. We didn’t say anything, but we were thinking, “The amount he’s just cost us, this fucker’d better survive at least six months so we feel like we got our money’s worth.” Seeing our purchases, the lady at the checkout brilliantly deduced that we had just acquired a dog, and started talking to us about vaccinations, health records, and sterilization. We took her leaflet to shut her up and threw it into the next garbage bin we passed. We don’t even have health records ourselves, so…
We put his food and cushion in the part of the living room where the computer is and pottered around for a bit while he got used to his surroundings. After one minute, he’d drunk all his water and gobbled up his Orijen ration. Apparently, you shouldn’t drink when you eat, it’s bad for your digestion, the water makes the food swell. I should think it’s even worse if you’ve stuffed yourself with two cans of Dr. Ballard’s an hour earlier. But nutritional advice is all very well for people who are used to eating every day. From Steve’s perspective, this day was an anomaly. Such an abundance couldn’t possibly last. In this situation, his basic survival instinct told him to make the most of it while it was there. Once his two bowls were empty, he looked over at his cushion, then, having judged it to be inedible, he lost interest in it and dragged himself up onto the couch, where he curled up into a ball and fell asleep immediately. He’s still asleep as I write this, and he looks as though he’s dreaming about running or digging a hole because he’s twitching his feet and letting out little sighs.
“Twenty dollars for a cushion! He could have tried it, at least.”
“Pah. We’ll tell him that when he wakes up. For now, we’ve got a bigger problem to solve.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what are we going to do with him when we go to Bird-in-Hand? Have you thought about that?”
“Vaguely, but we aren’t leaving right away. Anyway, we always solve our problems at the last minute.”
“Yes, except that our problems usually revolve around us. If we behave like idiots, we’re the ones who suffer. Now it involves Steve, and it’s one of our responsibilities as his masters to make the right decisions about his well-being.”
“But it’s not really a problem: we’ll just take him with us. It’s easy to travel with a dog in the States—there are lots of pet-friendly hotels and even restaurants. Americans love their pets.”
“But crossing the border with an animal is pretty tricky. They have to be registered and vaccinated, and you need all sorts of permits. Miles of forms to fill in and you come out of it a thousand bucks poorer. I know all about it: my grandmother’s sister goes to Florida every winter and takes Muguet with her.”
“So what should we do then?”
“We’ll have to have someone look after him, but I can’t think who.”
“We could leave him here and ask the neighbour to come and feed him and take him out for a walk every day. He’s always round here anyway, he might as well make himself useful once in a while.”
“Are you crazy?! I wouldn’t want to be in debt to the neighbour if my life depended on it.”
“Who, then? My parents wouldn’t want to because he’d probably fight with their cats, and your mother’s afraid of dogs. Your sister, on the other hand…”
“She’ll say she hasn’t got time. That’s her greatest pleasure in life, saying she hasn’t got time.”
“But she has got time. She lives close by, and she goes out every day anyway to take Bilbo for a walk. She’d just need to pick Steve up on her way past. She could even keep him at her house, then he’d be company for Bilbo.”
“Yeah, but she’s still going to say she hasn’t got time.”
“Ask her anyway, we’ve got nothing to lose.”
“As a last resort.”
“This is the last resort. With your parents and the neighbour, we’ve pretty much been through all our acquaintances. Unless you ask Sébastien…”
“Then I really would feel as though I was taking advantage of his good nature.”
“Can you think of anyone else?”
“Fine, give me the phone, I’ll call my sister.”
She picked up after four or five rings, like she does every time, to make it look as though she’s busy. I revealed the reason for my call without beating about the bush. “Would you look after our dog for a month and a half this autumn while we’re in Pennsylvania?”
“You’ve got a dog?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to look after it otherwise. Actually, he’s very new, we’ve only had him for an hour.”
“Where did you buy him?”
“We found him.”
“Oh. What kind of dog is it?”
“No particular kind. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes, I’d love to.”
“Really? I
t wouldn’t be a bother?”
“Not a bit. Especially since you won’t go.”
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