by Miriam Toews
“Yup,” said Hosea. “But he has to be in, because he needs to be the fire chief.”
Lorna looked at Hosea for a second. “Needs to be the fire chief?” she asked. “Like he needs to eat and sleep?”
“Exactly,” said Hosea. “Just like that. He has to stay in, to be the fire chief. He loves to put out fires. He has to put out fires. I’ll explain another time.”
Lorna raised her eyebrows and let her head fall to her chest, in a dramatic gesture of defeat and exhaustion. “Make me some coffee,” she said. “No wait … no caffeine …” She had her head resting on her arms, on the table.
Hosea thought of Caroline Russo, pregnant with Johnny’s baby, and dying in the fire while Johnny was passed out in the yard. He nodded his head and stroked Lorna’s hair. “He needs to put out fires,” he murmured softly. “He really does.” Hosea understood perfectly. “You see, Lorna, it’s like this,” he said. “Years ago … Lorna?” said Hosea. “Lorna?” Lorna made a purring sound but didn’t move. She loves me, thought Hosea. She will help me meet my father, and then she’ll have our baby. Carefully, he picked Lorna up from the kitchen chair and carried her to the bed. As he bent over to remove her socks he noticed they didn’t match. One was pink and fleecy and had a little ball on it that poked out from behind Lorna’s ankle like a spur, and the other one was a kneesock, plain and white. Hosea gently pulled the socks off Lorna’s wide feet and laid them over the back of the chair so she would find them when she woke up. He stared at Lorna’s bare feet for a minute or two. He considered lifting her T-shirt slightly just to see her stomach and to imagine the thumbnail-sized embryo that was inside it that he had helped to create—but instead he moved her hair away from her face and covered her up with the blanket. He went back to the kitchen table and sat down and stared outside at the sky. The colour of Knutie’s cigarette filters, he thought to himself. He saw the water tower sticking up into the orange sky and imagined the white horse racing round its bulbous top. If he could paint the water tower the colour the sky was right then, the colour of Knute’s filters, thought Hosea, then the water tower would become one with the sky and the white horse would look like it was flying through the air. At least at those times of the day when the sky was orange. Like right now, thought Hosea, looking at the time on his VCR. 5:20, it said. Well, that’s quite early, thought Hosea. But how else to achieve this effect? When the baby was grown up a bit, thought Hosea, he could choose the colour of sky he liked best and Hosea would find a paint to match, maybe dark blue or pink, and Hosea could pass on his flying horse to his son. Or his daughter. “Or my daughter,” said Hosea out loud, smiling. Now close your eyes, honey, and stand over here and look way up and when I say open your eyes you will see a horse flying. But, thought Hosea, for now it will be filter orange. I’ve got to get on it. I’m running out of time. Will I be guaranteed an orange sky and a flying horse when the Prime Minister is in town? Not necessarily, he thought. But you never know. Hosea banged his scarred palm against the side of the table but felt no pain. Hmph, he thought, it must come and go. He did it again and still nothing, not a twinge, not one jot of tenderness, no pain. Hosea walked over to the bedroom and took off his clothes and lay down next to Lorna. She opened her eyes for a second and put her arm over his chest and her head on his shoulder.
Dory had asked Tom’s Uncle Jack to pay him a visit. Uncle Jack lived in the States, just on the other side of the border in Fargo, North Dakota. He was a part-time magician and a full-time auctioneer and even when he wasn’t working he spoke really fast, in entire paragraphs, a hundred miles an hour, like the telling of his stories was a timed Olympic event. Tom loved the guy, and Dory was sure that if anyone could jar Tom from his depressive stupor, at least for a minute or two, it would be Uncle Jack.
All right, I’m here, but not for long, you son of a bitch, what gives? Lost your sea legs, Tom? You’re down, you’re not beat, not yet, listen to me, I had a cancer of the groin not once but twice, not a fuckin’ picnic, I’ll tell ya, though it hasn’t, I repeat, has not affected my performance, the girls’ll attest to that much, what are you smiling at, two weeks after the chemotherapy gets rid of that mess in my groin, my prostate explodes in my ass, hadda have it hoovered out through my backdoor, eh? eh? still smiling? I shit you not, my friend, it’s true, Doc told me not to ride my horse for four goddamn months, I was on her in a week, scuze me? Less than a week, that’s right, four days it was, but then, Jesus Christ, that shit for a horse falls on top of me, breaks fifteen of my ribs, that’s all, but what? four? five? still, my pelvis, my arms, both of ’em, and my goddamn tailbone—that’s when I quit smoking, in the hospital, too much damn work going down the hall, down the elevator, out the front doors. When you can’t smoke in a hospital—that’s where you really need one. I don’t know, I don’t know, what’s that? Nah, forget about it. I went to Vancouver to visit my daughter and her husband, find out the guy’s a woman, she never told me it was her husband, she said, never ever, she said, Partner, partner, I said partner, Dad, she says to me, partner, Tom? What is that? Partner! But never mind, last summer I hooked my eyeball with the end of a bungee cord, pierced the retina, the iris, the cornea, the works, the hook stuck in my eye socket like it was plugged into a wall, the bungee cord dangling there like this, and I’m thinking, though of course I’m in excruciating pain, excuse me, do I look like a source of power, my eye holds no electrical current, under fifty watts in this cash register at all times, please unplug this hook from my eye, somebody, and then wouldn’t you know it, the neighbour’s cat spies the cord dangling and makes a running leap for it, I can just see it out of my good eye, the one without a hook stuck in the middle of it, and I’m thinking, No way, don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t, but forget about it, he does it, and I’m thinking good-bye, right or left or whatever eye, depends of course on how you’re looking at it, good-bye it was nice seeing you or seeing with you as the case may be, because as soon as this damn cat, it’s a fat son of a bitch—looks like a small pony, makes contact with the bungee cord he’ll yank the entire eye unit out of its hole, and I’ll be Mr. One-Eye, Mr. Cyclops, the life of every boring party as I drop the glassy job they give me in the hospital into the punch bowl, and drag my foot around behind me, I’m thinking, you know, of how I can work this unfortunate loss of mine to my advantage when the damn thing falls right out onto the ground, the hook, that is, along with the cord, not my eye, the cat’s miffed and leaves, blood squirts from my eye, from the hole where until then the hook had been, blocking the blood from leaving, you know, like a knife in the back, you leave it in until you get to the hospital, so you don’t bleed to death, and so there I am, at emergency I didn’t have to wait, of course, nobody likes to sit in a waiting room next to some guy projectile bleeding from one eye and trying to read a magazine with his other, Doc slaps a patch over my pierced eye, the slimy tissue grows over the hole, leaving a faint scar, and everybody’s happy. Eh, Tom? Tom?
“Jesus Christ, man, a heart attack, not a death sentence…. Can you not look at me? I’m cracking a beer here and now I am pouring it—ahhhhhhh, good—down my throat. Cold, familiar beer. Want one? … Okay, I’ll drink it all myself. And when I’m done I’ll have fortified myself enough to give you a proper burial because this, this is not a life, pal. All I gotta do is get rid of this bed, pry away the carpet and the floorboards, not to mention the underlay and linoleum, then lower myself a few feet, jackhammer the concrete basement floor, drop you into the dirt, bed ‘n’ all, and you’re in your bloody grave, man, say a few Hail Marys, remember the laughs, hope it doesn’t happen to me anytime soon, and Uncle Jack bids a fond farewell to Tom McCloud, good-bye, Kid Fun, good-bye, my favourite nephew … good-bye. Jesus Christ.”
“Well,” said Tom’s Uncle Jack, “Lord knows I tried.” He stood by the front door wrapped in what looked like a groundsheet, fumbling with a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. “Like Cheerios I eat these,” he said to Dory. He turned to Summer Feelin’ and said, “You’re per
fect, you are a perfect little girl.”
“She’s a perfect little girl,” he said to Knute.
And then to Summer Feelin’ he said, “I was born the day the Titanic sank.” Summer Feelin’ smiled. “That’s right, two disasters in one day,” said Uncle Jack. “But never mind, have you got a pumpkin?” Summer Feelin’ shook her head. “That’s too bad,” said Uncle Jack. “If you had a pumpkin I could show you my card trick. Do you know that I can throw an ordinary playing card right through a pumpkin and have the damn thing come out the other side with not one, I shit you not, not one shred of pumpkin flesh hanging from it, and the slit from the card entering and exiting barely visible on either side of the pumpkin?”
“Can you do it with a cantaloupe?” asked Summer Feelin’. Or somebody’s head? Knute wondered. “Absolutely not,” said Uncle Jack. “It must be a pumpkin. But listen to me, have you got a ten-story building anywhere around here, anywhere in this town?”
“A tall one, you mean a tall, tall building?” said Summer Feelin’ standing on her tiptoes and holding her arms up over her head.
“That’s right, it’s gotta be ten stories, not nine, not eleven, but ten, ten stories tall.”
“No, we don’t have one of those,” said Summer Feelin’.
“Well, that is too bad, that’s really a shame, because if you had a ten-story building I could show you another card trick. There are only two men in the whole world who can do this trick, me and my brother, your Uncle Skylar.”
Dory cleared her throat. “Jack,” she said gently, “Sky’s been dead for …”
“Never mind,” said Uncle Jack, “that’s what you think.”
Dory shook her head and tried not to laugh, not because she didn’t want to offend Uncle Jack, but because she didn’t want to encourage him.
“Now listen to me, Hooked on a Feelin’ or whatever your—”
“Summer Feelin’!” said Summer Feelin’.
“That’s right,” said Uncle Jack, “and some aren’t. Listen! I can take an ordinary playing card and, on the very first try, with just the right wind conditions, of course, throw that playing card onto the top of a ten-story building. Standing on the ground, me standing on the ground, of course. What do you think of that, Summer-Time Feelin’?”
Summer Feelin’ began to flap and hum. “What are you doing?” said Uncle Jack. “What’s she doing?” he said to Knute.
“She’s excited,” said Knute. “Don’t worry. She likes the idea of that card trick.”
“Really?” said Uncle Jack. “You find me a ten-story building, an ordinary playing card, get me out there, bring the kid, and I’ll do the trick for her, it’ll knock her socks off. I’m serious. Bring a pumpkin, I’ll do that trick, too, no charge. I mean it. Tell Tom to crawl out of his coffin and come along, he’s seen me do it, I’m better at it than Skylar ever was, or is—”
“Good-bye, Uncle Jack,” they all said in unison.
“Find me that building, Knutie!” he yelled just before getting into his car. “I’ll do the trick, I promise! Good-bye! A rived-erci! So long, Knutie! Keep your knees together …” his voice trailed off as he drove away.
eleven
“Areola is a nice name for a girl,” said Hosea. “Don’t you think?”
Lorna started to laugh. “Areola?” she spluttered. “God, you kill me—” Lorna was laughing hard. “Hey, Hose,” she said, “what do you think—?”
“Oops, watch your step, my dear.”
“Stop telling me to be careful, please. If you don’t let me move around normally my body will think I’m dead and reject the baby. I’ll end up aborting, Hosea, if you keep—”
“Well, every name means something, doesn’t it?”
“Areola Garden Funk, lovely. Sure. I love it. Can we walk a little faster, Hosea?”
“I never walk, you know, never, beats me why, I just—”
“Well, you’re fat and lazy, that’s why, I’m only pregnant, I can walk.”
“I prefer Funk Garden … isn’t that a band?”
“No, you’re thinking of Sound Garden.”
“Am I? Hey, wait a second …”
“Look,” said Hosea. “Shit. Shit, shit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Lorna, looking around, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head for a better view.
“Over there! Behind the Wagon Wheel. It’s Mrs. Cherniski, oh shit, that means she’s back, she’s okay. She’s already working, for Christ’s sake, some kind of feeble heart attack that must have been—”
“Hosea!” said Lorna, trying to unscramble her sunglasses from her hair. “I promised you I wouldn’t laugh, I promised you I wouldn’t move to Algren until after July first, I promised you I would keep your crazy plan a secret. But you promised me that you wouldn’t act like a nutcase, like some kind of grim reaper rubbing your hands together, sniffing the air for the scent of decaying flesh—”
“Lorna! I am not a grim reaper, sniffing the air for … I just thought if Cherniski had gone to live with her daughter in the city, then—”
“Oh, bullshit, you just wanted her gone. Even if she’d croaked, you wouldn’t have minded.”
“Lorna, that is not true, and don’t get all mad at me, it’s bad for the baby, and it’s—”
“Now listen to you, Hosea. In one breath you’re pissed off that Cherniski’s heart attack didn’t kill her, in the next you’re all concerned for the baby and admonishing me for, well, for basically reacting the way any normal person would to your bizarre plan, getting your father—”
“Hello, Mrs. Cherniski,” said Hosea, looking at Lorna and casually slicing his index finger across his throat in an attempt to shut her up. “It’s good to see you up and around, and back at work so soon, my God, you’re a lucky woman.”
Mrs. Cherniski glared at Hosea like she’d just been hit with a pitch, and was preparing to storm the mound. “Lucky? Lucky, my foot,” she said. “Lucky to be back slaving over a hot stove for a bunch of greasy, gap-toothed men in overalls and rubber boots who wouldn’t know a decent meal from a poke in the eye …” Mrs. Cherniski heaved a black garbage bag into the giant bin outside the Wagon Wheel and stomped back inside.
“I’ll tell you what, though, Hosea,” she yelled through the screen door. “Lucky is that my daughter is coming to Algren to help me out. She’s moving here, the whole kit and caboodle, and I’m gonna get myself some long overdue help from that girl. By the way, I hope to heck you’ve managed to get rid of that bastard Bill Quinn, you know he was the one who put me in the hospital, and if I see his scrawny butt ever again you’re the one who’ll be in the hospital, Hosea Funk.”
Hosea smiled and nodded. “Uh, when? When is she, are they, coming?”
“Can’t hear you, Hosea! What’d you say?”
Hosea’s hand flew to the front of his shirt. “I said when? When—”
Lorna grabbed Hosea by the arm and hissed, “Forget it, Hosea, don’t be so obvious, just let it go … say good-bye.”
“But …” said Hosea.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Cherniski,” said Lorna cheerfully, “don’t work too hard!”
Hosea and Lorna walked around to the front of the Wagon Wheel and nearly tripped over Bill Quinn, who was strolling down the sidewalk, tick tick tick, with his overgrown toenails clicking on the concrete and a new goatee-ish tuft of mangled hair on his chin and his soft wet eyes ringed by dark circles as if he’d spent all night smoking Gitanes in a waterfront speakeasy.
“Dammit,” said Hosea, “it’s Bill Quinn.” Hosea lunged for the dog and missed while Lorna put her hands to her face like Munch’s model in The Scream, except she was laughing, and Bill Quinn kept walking. Tick tick tick tick. No problem. Enjoy your trip, Mr. Mayor? See you in the fall, har har.
“It’s okay, Hosea,” said Lorna. “He’s crossing the street, Cherniski won’t be able to see him. Don’t worry.” She crouched down and touched Hosea’s shoulder.
“All right, up you go now, old man,” said Lor
na.
“Hey! Whatcha doin’, Hose?” said Combine Jo, who had just pulled up next to the sidewalk Hosea was lying on. “Listening for hoofbeats? Are we in for a raid? Whoah, girl,” she said, as she turned off the ignition. “How much time do we have, Sheriff Funk?”
Hosea cleared his throat. “Actually, I was trying to catch Bill Quinn, but he got away and I tripped over him.” Lorna and Combine Jo exchanged grins.
“Hah!” said Combine Jo, “serves you right, padre, nobody catches a Quinn. Hello, Lorna, nice seeing you, you oughtta hang a sign around Mr. Loverboy here’s neck saying so and so many accident-free days—you wouldn’t get past eight or nine. You know he’s a magnet for trouble, Cherniski will attest to that, strange things happen when he’s around, ask the doc, when Hosea goes to the hospital the Earth moves. People die, babies are born …”
“Oh, Jo, that’s not true,” said Hosea, stretching his mouth into the shape of a smile, more painful than vaginal tearing during childbirth, he thought, remembering the lurid chapter of the pregnant woman book he was currently reading. Not true at all, heh, heh, stretch those lips, push the teeth to the fore and chuckle confidently, now he felt his mouth was at least forty centimetres dilated, don’t forget to breathe and—
“She’s gone, Hosea,” said Lorna. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Hosea, massaging his cheeks, returning them to their original position, expecting to taste blood and pass out at any moment. “Just fine. Shall we?” he said. Hosea and Lorna walked slowly to the bus depot. Hosea didn’t want to say goodbye. He hated saying good-bye. Lorna was sighing in that way people do after laughing, shaking her head, “Ooohhhh God, Hosea,” wiping at her eyes, emitting a few remaining snorts and guffaws. Hosea nodded his head and grimaced amicably. “Ha ha,” he said, “go ahead and laugh. It’s good for the baby.”
“Good-bye, Hosea,” said Lorna, dropping her sunglasses and her bus ticket and holding her arms out for a hug.