by Miriam Toews
Just then Summer Feelin’ came running into the room. Max said, “Hey, Summer Feelin’, it’s a beautiful day for collecting bottles. Get your rubber boots on and we’ll hit the ditches around the dike. They’re full of ’em.” This idea got Summer Feelin’ flapping and Max started beating his chest to make helicopter noises and saying things like “incoming,” “over,” “prepare troops for landing,” “all clear.” Knute looked at Max. At his mouth and his hands, his boots, his narrow hips.
Knute said good-bye to no one in particular and left for work. There was a lot to do. Hosea said he wanted to concentrate on painting the water tower. “Red, with a white horse running right around it,” he said. And something about turning the old feed mill into a theatre for young people. Neither of these ideas seemed feasible to Knute. Maybe a red water tower, okay, but how would they get a huge white horse painted on the top of it? “Why a horse?” she’d said. “Why not just the name Algren?”
“No,” Hosea said, “it should be a horse, a white horse.” She told him that if they painted a horse right around the top of it, it would look like the horse was chasing its butt, like a dog with worms. Then she mentioned that even though the feed mill might make a great theatre, the youth of Algren seemed more interested in playing pool at Norm’s and going to the city whenever they got the chance. Maybe Hosea could turn the feed mill into an arcade, or a shooting range, but a theatre? Summer stock? In Algren? “Well, then,” Hosea said, “see what you can do about getting rid of that black dog.” This she could handle, she thought. No problem. She could find some farmer outside town, maybe in Whithers, who would want a dog, or she’d just take it into the city, to the Humane Society, and let them find a home for it.
“By the way,” Hosea said, “his name’s Bill Quinn.”
“Bill Quinn?” said Knute. “You mean, he has a first and a last name? Bill Quinn? If he has a name, doesn’t he have an owner?”
“Nope,” Hosea said. “No, he doesn’t. He’s his own dog.”
“Oh, Bill’s a lone wolf, eh?”
“Yes, he is,” said Hosea.
Knute was about to say, “Friend of yours?” But Hosea wasn’t finished.
“Knute?” he’d said, just before walking out the door, “Please don’t let him get hurt. Just get him out of town in one piece.”
Knute said she’d do what she could and then sat for a minute and looked out the window on to Main Street. She saw Combine Jo sitting cross-legged on the hood of her car and looking at a magazine. She was wearing a fishing hat with hooks in it. God, she thought, that woman is S.F.’s grandmother. Knute looked the other way down Main Street and there were Marilyn and Josh! She opened the window and stuck her head out. “Marilyn! Hello!” she yelled. “What are you doing here?” Before she could answer Combine Jo yelled up at Knute.
“Hey, Knutie! I’m looking at my Canadian Tire book here, and kids’ bikes are cheap! Do you think Summer Feelin’ would want one? Does she ride a two-wheeler yet, or a trike? Max could teach her how to ride a two-wheeler, or we could get a two-wheeler and put the, what do you call ’em, training wheels on it. What do you think? Why don’t you come down here and have a look! There is one in here with a very sharp racing stripe, and it’s purple, did you know purple is S.F.’s favourite colour? And a basket would be nice, too, don’t you think?”
Combine Jo pushed her fishing hat back on her head and peered up at Knute’s window. She pointed to her catalogue and yelled, “It’s all in here, in here!” Marilyn and Josh, by this time, were standing beside Jo’s car, looking at her and up at Knute and back at Jo, and Marilyn was grinning.
“Hello,” said Combine Jo.
“Marilyn!” Knute yelled from the window. “This is Jo, Max’s mom, and Jo, this is Marilyn, my friend, and her son, Josh.” Knute felt like throwing herself out the window onto the pavement below.
“Is he here?” asked Marilyn.
“Is who here?” Knute yelled.
“Max!” she said.
“Yes, he is,” said Jo. “He’s got S.F. at home with him right now, or they’re somewhere around, who knows, he looks after S.F. while Knutie works for the mayor.”
“Well,” said Marilyn. “There have been developments.” She and Knute looked at each other and smiled. Combine Jo went back to her catalogue.
“Jo,” said Knute, “go ahead and get her a bike, with training wheels if you want. And, uh, thanks.”
“Hear that?” said Jo to Marilyn. “That’s the sound of ice breaking. Have a good time, you two,” Jo said to Marilyn. “Knutie needs a friend, you know. We all do from time to time.”
“That’s true,” said Marilyn, smiling, and disappeared into the building.
“Hey!” Jo yelled up to the window. “Knutie! Why don’t you bring your friend’s kid over to my house and Max can look after both of ’em? It would be good for S.F. to have a playmate for a change and then you two gals can have a real good talk, maybe a drink, Hosea wouldn’t mind if you called it a day. Tell him I told you to punch out.”
Knute felt like saying to Jo, “Would you shut the fuck up, please?” But instead she said, “Yeah maybe, maybe,” and slammed the window shut.
Marilyn and Josh came into the office. Marilyn and Knute, both laughing by then, gave each other a big hug. “How’s it going, buddy?” said Knute to Josh.
“Fine,” he said. “Can I play with Summer Feelin’?”
Marilyn and Knute looked at each other. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?” Marilyn asked. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t know,” said Knute. “Because I know you would have told me to ignore him totally, or kill him, or have mad passionate et cetera, et cetera [Josh was in the room] with him, and none of those things has happened. It’s all been just, you know, ordinary, really. I thought I’d be letting you down.”
“Ordinary?” said Marilyn. “Well, that is too bad. But you could have told me, anyway. I need to know these things. We’re best friends! You should have told me.”
“I know, I know,” Knute said.
“So that’s Combine Jo, eh?” said Marilyn.
“Yeah.” Knute rolled her eyes.
“She’s cool,” said Marilyn.
“Cool? Combine Jo? You gotta be kidding. She’s nuts.”
“Well,” said Marilyn, “she wants to buy S.F. a bike, that’s cool. She’s nice.”
“God, Marilyn, you have no idea. She’s a drunk. She’s crazy.”
“Well,” said Marilyn. “I would be, too, if I was Max’s mom and if I lived in this weird town and everybody was pissed off at me for something I did a hundred years ago.”
“I’m not pissed off at her for what she did way back then, I’m pissed off at her for telling Max to leave me when I was pregnant,” said Knute.
“Well,” said Marilyn. “I hate to tell you this, beautiful dreamer, but she didn’t put a gun to his head.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure,” Knute said. “Anyway, you’re here. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I need to know these things. We’re best friends.”
Marilyn smiled. “I didn’t know we were coming. Josh and I were walking around downtown ’cause it’s nice out and there was the bus station, and there was my cheque in my pocket, and there was the bus to Algren, and there you go. Here we are.”
“Here we are,” said Knute, smiling.
“When can I play with Summer Feelin’?” Josh asked. Knute looked over at Marilyn.
“Do you want to bring him over to Max’s?”
“Sure, what the heck. I’m dying to meet him, actually. Has he changed?”
“No.”
“Too bad.”
“I guess.”
“You’re still hot for him, I can tell. Aren’t you, Knute?”
Before Knute could say anything, Marilyn said, “What about this guy, this mayor dude, is he cute?”
“Cute?” Knute said. “He’s old.”
“So?”
“I don’t think he’s cute. Well, maybe. Naa
h. And he’s got some kind of a girlfriend, her last name’s Garden.”
“Garden?” said Marilyn. “Weird name. Garden of Eden, forbidden fruit. What’s his name? Hosea? Strange biblical setup if you ask me. Can I meet him?”
“Maybe, he’s all over the place, usually. I don’t know what he does most of the time.”
“He could be dealing drugs,” said Marilyn.
“I doubt it.”
“Oh yeah,” said Marilyn, “drugs to farmers. They’re a very stressed-out bunch of people.”
“He wants me to get rid of a dog, actually. Bill Quinn. Do you want to help me?”
“Excuse me?” “Bill Quinn’s gotta go.” “The dog?” “Yeah.”
“Sure, I’ll help. How old exactly is he, Knute? Eighty, ninety?”
“Bill Quinn?”
“Hosea.”
“No, no, around fifty, I think.”
“Oh, pfft,” said Marilyn. “That’s nothing.”
Knute and Marilyn liked Combine Jo’s idea about the talk and the drink. While Knute was leaving a note for Hosea telling him her friend was in town and they were off to see what they could do about Bill Quinn, Marilyn opened one of his drawers and pulled out an old orange Hilroy scribbler. “Look at this. Remember these?” she said.
“Marilyn!” said Knute. “Don’t go snooping around in his drawers. Put that thing back.”
“Wow,” said Marilyn. “Hosea’s really on the cutting edge, isn’t he? He doesn’t even have an electric typewriter.”
“Let’s go,” said Knute. “C’mon, Josh. S.F. will be very happy to see you.” And they left.
“Bye-bye!” said Combine Jo. “You girls enjoy yourselves. And don’t worry about your boy there, he’ll be fine with Max. Hell, I might go home myself in a while, see if my goddamn bike’s in one piece. First I’ll order this little purple one for S.F. and then she and I could go bike riding together around the dike or around town, somewhere. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”
Oh wonderful, thought Knute, cycling on a steep embankment with a crazy old drunk woman. Great. “Okay, Jo, just make sure it has training wheels on it. It needs training wheels.”
“Righto!” said Jo. She ripped out the page from the catalogue and smiled. “Have a good time, ladies,” she said, and waved them away.
“Did you see her looking at us?” said Marilyn.
“What do you mean?”
“The way she was looking at us. Wistfully like. I bet she’d like to join us for a drink. Does she have any friends, Knute, or what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably. Somewhere.”
They walked along Main Street towards the dike road and the hatchery and Max’s place. They took turns giving Josh a piggyback ride.
“You know, it really smells bad in this town,” said Marilyn.
“Well, it’s spring,” said Knute, “that’s all the fertilizer thawing, you know, shit on the fields.”
“Oh. Real shit?”
“Yeah. Well, not human shit—animal.”
“But real shit, not processed or packaged or anything?”
“Right. Raw animal shit. It might be liquidized or something, I don’t know. Because they spray it on. You know, like hose it on.”
“For fertilizer, eh?”
“Yup. It’s the best thing. Crops, crops, crops. This high.”
“Wow. But what about afterwards? You know, when we eat them, the crops. Fecal residue.”
“We can’t tell.”
“Really? We’re eating animal shit and we don’t know it?”
“Well, we know it, I guess, we just don’t think about it.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t stink now. There should be no fertilizer on the fields now because it would have been cut down with the crops, you know, reaped, in the fall. Wouldn’t the farmers wait until spring has really sprung to put fresh shit on the fields? Like just before they plant or sow or whatever it’s called?”
“Seed,” said Knute. “And it’s not reaped, it’s harvested.”
“Seed, yeah,” said Marilyn.
“I don’t know when they do it,” said Knute.
“Well, spring, obviously, Knute, that’s when crops are planted. That’s when they need to be fertilized.”
“I don’t know, they could be perennials. Maybe they just come up at the same time every year. Like tulips.”
“I don’t think so,” said Marilyn.
“I don’t know,” said Knute.
Over at Combine Jo’s, Marilyn wandered around the house saying, “Holy moly, three bathrooms!” and “She lives here all alone?” and things like that. Max kissed her on both cheeks when Knute introduced them and said, “Pleased to meet you, Marilyn, Joshua, S.F.’s been telling me all about you.”
“Joshua’s allergic to dairy products,” she finally managed to say. Knute told Max that Joshua was there to play with S.F. and she and Marilyn were going out. They’d be back around three. Max gave them a bottle of fine wine from Combine Jo’s stash and half a pack of cigarettes, and suggested they go out to Johnny Dranger’s rotting pile of hay bales, sit on top of it, and get hammered. They’d be able to see for miles and miles, he said. It was covered with orange plastic and sagging in the middle so if they got cold, he added, they could just hunker down in the centre and be protected from the wind.
Good idea, thought Knute, but how the hell did he know about Johnny Dranger’s pile of hay?
“I go there to write,” he said, grinning. Knute and Marilyn left and as soon as they were out of the house they looked at each other and said, “Yeah, right.” Then Marilyn started laughing and telling Knute that Max was foxy, shorter than she had expected, nice eyes, all the stuff Knute already knew. Write, my ass, she thought. “Hang on,” she said to Marilyn. She went back to the house and a few minutes later came back with another bottle—Jack Daniel’s—and Marilyn said, “What about that dog? Bill Whatshisname, how’re we gonna get rid of a dog from on top of a pile of hay?”
“Screw Bill Quinn,” Knute said. “Let’s go.”
nine
Hosea Funk had spent the past few days cleaning out his house, getting rid of all the old sad things of Euphemia’s, her Noxema, her Dippity-Do, her alum powder for canker sores, her old winter boots, the half-finished bags of scotch mints, and all her old clothes. He fixed his fridge and cleaned out the grout from behind the taps on the bathroom and kitchen sinks. He had planned to remove all of Euphemia’s Reader’s Digest condensed books from the small pantry in the basement. That’s when he found out someone in his house had been drinking rye whiskey, and lots of it. Boxes and boxes of empty bottles had been stored, or hidden, behind the boxes of Reader’s Digests.
Hosea had sat down on the cold cement floor. His eyes followed a crack that led to the drain hole. He remembered Tom telling him not to pee in it because he’d heard of some guy in Chicago or somewhere who had peed in his drain hole and had hit some electrical current that had travelled up the length of his stream of urine and then zap, his penis had been electrocuted and had turned black and shrivelled up right then and there. He must have been bullshitting me, thought Hosea. He sat there and no other thoughts came to mind other than the one he had been fighting off for the last minute or two.
She was drunk when she told me the Prime Minister was my father.
No, he thought, she couldn’t have been. She was on her deathbed. She couldn’t walk to the pantry in the basement to get a bottle, let alone lift her head to drink from it. “Her heart simply gave out on her, Hosea,” the doctor had said after she died. Her heart or her liver? She wasn’t very old. Had anybody known? Had the doctor known? Why was she drinking herself to death?
He had stared at the bottles for half an hour. He had never seen her drink, never seen her drunk. Had he just not known? She had always seemed content and in control. Did she drink only at night while he slept? During the day while he was at school? Is that what she did all day? Is that why she laughed and shrugged her shoulders at just about
everything? Is that why she bought so many bags of scotch mints? Is that why she did handstands on the kitchen chairs?
Oh, Lord, it doesn’t matter, Hosea told himself, and smiled. He thought about tempting fate and pissing in the drain hole. Who can blame her, after all? he thought. She was alone.
Is there something bad ’bout a lady drinking all alone in a room? A letter in your handwriting … hmmmm, he couldn’t remember what the next words were.
Rye whiskey, thought Hosea. Had he picked fresh roses from Euphemia’s garden that day after school for somebody who had never been there? Rye whiskey roses for a rye whiskey man. Well, thought Hosea, I’m real, anyway. “Mother,” he said out loud, “was your life unbearable?” A letter in your handwriting and the scent of your perfume, I’m sorry, darling, so sorry, darling, I just assumed … is that how it went? Hosea hummed a little out of tune. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am.”
He would tell Lorna about his plan. He would tell her she could move in with him after July first and do whatever she wanted with him and the house. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell her about his plan, she might think he was crazy. He would tell her something else. Something that would make the July first date seem somehow prescient, significant, romantic, and well, just right.
On that same day that he had been cleaning, Hosea had found out from Jeannie that Tom was not doing well. Nor, for that matter, was Dory. Jeannie had said both were depressed and miserable and trying to fool themselves for the sake of their daughter and granddaughter. There was more but Hosea had suddenly feigned back pain and staggered into his house explaining to Jeannie that he needed some Tylenol and an ice pack.
Hosea sat in his clean house and wondered about his old buddy Tom. Expansive, humble, tolerant Tom. Feeling bad. And worse, depressed. Well, thought Hosea. He needs a friend and that friend is me.
Hosea looked outside and noticed Euphemia’s rose bush blooming for the first time that spring. A dozen roses in a bottle of rye whiskey, thought Hosea. That would cheer him up. Hosea put on his windbreaker and Leander’s hat and went outside and picked some roses and stuffed them inside one of Euphemia’s empty whiskey bottles.