Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  LIVER HAD LEFT THE HOUSE that morning intending to outdistance his shadow, and wound up entering a backyard garden shed with Alice Bouchard. The shed door closed behind them. A hook clinked into an eye as she locked it, and Oliver became acutely aware that they were alone. They were enclosed in a sepia-coloured light, a confinement of the sun’s heat, the air full-blown with the odour of the earthen floor. An atmosphere that was similar to being in a tent, a containment, an aura of secrecy that was an aphrodisiac overcoming whatever doubts Oliver might have had about the wisdom of being there.

  He reached for her and she skittered out of his hands, her laughter girlish as she turned away from him to swiftly undress. Her clothes lay in a scented pool at her feet—a flower, he thought vaguely, roses—as she faced him naked in her narrow body. Her skin was prickled with gooseflesh and the colour of worn porcelain, breasts like small firm pears, and she wore them high. Wait, wait, she said, as Oliver went to caress her.

  Her flanks flashed white in the half-light when she reached under an overturned wheelbarrow and brought out a Hudson Bay blanket encased in plastic. She unwrapped it quickly and spread it across the floor in a way that suggested she’d thought about doing so. She had prepared for this moment by clearing space in the centre of the floor, had stacked plant pots and wooden seeding flats around the perimeter of the walls.

  Of course, Oliver had thought about this happening. It had always been there between them when they sat in the kitchen and in the dining room, with only the dim hall lamp shedding its tepid light, the glow of a fish tank illuminating that withheld desire. Oliver might have hinted that they do more than talk, than play cards, if he’d thought there was the slightest chance she could be persuaded. And yet he felt a sudden shyness as he knelt beside her on the blanket. He shed his trousers and boxers in one swift movement. As though, if he didn’t, he might not shed them. As though he was determined to defeat whatever doubts he might have. He peeled off his shirt without unbuttoning it. She opened her arms to receive him in an embrace, her smile self-conscious, hesitant. Yes, she said quietly, and then a resounding Yes!, her face leavened with desire. He climbed onto her at once because he was mindful of his paunch. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder and moaned, her body grew taut and quivered against his.

  And then it was done, and Oliver lay beside her, his heartbeat growing quiet. From the river came a harsh cry that sounded like a heron, but he hadn’t seen herons in years. A person had to go farther north, near the delta, up where the river emptied into the lake, in order to see herons and cranes. He’d gone with Romeo to his summer camp once and seen those birds among the reeds. His brother had cupped his hands and made the sound of the birds and they had raised their heads. But not here. Not now.

  A desire for sleep was a woollen hood that kept wanting to slide down over his brain. He’d once seen a whooping crane in a store window, inside a glass case. Those birds were gone, the passenger pigeons too, the buffalo. Conjured away by the priests, according to his grandmother’s remembrances. He recalled Romeo’s hand sweeping across the land. Geez, must have been something to see, eh? Sometimes, at the plant, they call me Old Buffalo, Romeo said. Why not stay for a day or two? Wouldn’t kill you. Oliver turned away from the urgency in his brother’s voice. Romeo wanted the two of them to camp, but the tug of responsibilities was too strong for Oliver to deny. This is as close as I come to being Old Buffalo, Romeo said, smiling to hide his disappointment. Perhaps Romeo had wanted to talk about the priest, Oliver thought now. His brother had wanted to tell him what he already knew from rumours, and from what other boys had said. Unlike Romeo, they’d been able to jeer and draw pitiful caricatures of the man of the cloth.

  What is it? Alice asked, as Oliver sighed deeply. He remained silent.

  She lay beside him, her head cradled in the crook of his arm, the scent of her hair making him want to sneeze. Minute by minute he was fading, sinking into a sadness, and his throat tightened. He might have admitted to Alice now that he’d been jealous of her music training. Or he might have said, You were right. I was nothing more than a joe-boy to Henri Villebrun. Which was exactly what he would have been to her father, too. He remembered entering her father’s garage with his cap in hand. Hearing the man say, And what would you, a person without training do, sir? Not mechanics, that’s for certain. And I can sweep my own floors. When a person is about to dish out big money for a car, it’s a man’s reputation that sells it to them. What the man stands for in the community. The weight of his word with the manager at the caisse populaire, the Bank of Montreal. Go and prove yourself elsewhere and on your own time, her father had said. A man’s reputation, apparently, was determined by money, and the influence he wielded because he had money.

  And not by wisdom, fair play and generosity. The success of any man’s livelihood used to depend on such traits: honesty, courage, loyalty, fidelity. Traits that made for a successful buffalo hunt. Oliver yearned to have been alive during those times, when good traits were a necessary part of everyday life. He sometimes longed to have been part of a hunt, to have experienced the time his grandmother had described in her talk with the Winnipeg Tribune reporter.

  It’s strange, Alice said. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time goes by, I still feel the same about you. I’ve been missing you more and more, not less.

  You don’t say, Oliver replied, her words causing discomfort. He purposefully did not imagine what she might be doing or thinking as she went about her life across the river. Her name, uttered by someone in passing, was a stone that made him stumble momentarily, and then he got on with what he was doing. Sunlight passed through cracks in the garden shed, illuminating a slash of skin on her ribs and a sprinkling of tiny red moles. He’d known her all his life. And yet, while he had adored her, he hadn’t really known her. Her leg, crooked over his hip, grew heavy. An ache rose in his back, an uncomfortable dampness gradually seeped through the blanket. He might have fallen asleep for a moment, as it seemed that the angle of light coming through the cracks had changed imperceptibly, enough that he felt the shed had become larger.

  From across the yard came a sound of a door opening and closing. Oliver turned his head towards it to listen, and saw that there was something moving near the base of a plant pot. What looked to be a patch of dark colour became a swarm of insects. A writhing and churning bed of ladybugs crawling overtop and under one another and up the sides of the pot. Hundreds of ladybugs of various sizes and shades of red, their glossy bodies looking as though they’d been painted in nail varnish. The insects had been brought to life by the uncommon heat of this June day, and meant to spread out, to mate and establish themselves in the world of the shed. As Sara feared they would do in the kitchen.

  The kids. Sara. Word would reach them about the hotel, if it hadn’t already.

  Alice? Madame Bouchard called from the back step, her voice a pigeon’s coo. Alice?

  Alice rose up on an elbow, her fingers against Oliver’s lips. She gestured to the door, its hook being fastened.

  Hoo, hoo, Alice? Madame Bouchard called.

  The clot of ladybugs had come apart, and strings of bugs were crawling off in all directions across the earthen floor and up the sides of other pots. Several were within inches of the blanket. The buggers could bite. Just before they clicked their hard shells and took off with their orange fingernail-clipping wings, they would take a chunk out of you. Oliver swore and pushed away from Alice, not caring if her mother heard.

  Mama! For the love of Christ, go away, Alice called out in anger. Spoons of wetness shone beneath her eyes, smudged with mascara. She looked older than what she was, and tired.

  That’s no way to talk, Madame Bouchard said reprovingly. Who’s that with you? Alice? she asked, when Alice didn’t reply.

  Oliver was gripped by panic as he tucked his shirt in and fastened his belt, recovered his boots from the edge of the blanket and stuffed his socks into a trouser pocket. He had to get home before the news broke. He fumbled with
the bootlaces, his fingers gone stiff.

  When will I see you again? Alice asked.

  I can’t say, he said. Don’t wait, he thought to say, because he didn’t know what, if anything, was certain any longer. He reached the door and undid its hook. It occurred to him that he’d put a similar hook on the door of his room under the stairs, in order to keep someone out. He was certain this hook was there to prevent them from being happened upon. He recalled Alice’s kiss last night, her tears. A hooligan had vandalized the tires on her car and she was feeling small. Feeling the waning of her beauty, perhaps. As in the past, she had counted on him to rescue her. To rescue her from the boredom of caring for old people.

  He burst through the shed door with an urgency to return home, without acknowledging the presence of Alice’s startled mother. He didn’t stop to close the gate, and went careering down the embankment towards the path, grabbing on to branches to keep himself from stumbling on the knots of tree roots. He hurried along, pursued by a dread that soon caught up with him and rode on his shoulders. He was remembering the call he’d heard earlier. The piercing sound of it.

  He was remembering long ago, a sparrow landing on a snowy windowsill to announce that his father’s spirit was departing. Oliver entered the radiating cold of an ice house and, through the fog of his own breath, saw his father laid out on blocks of ice. Then he went off to school, hoping that he’d find himself there, but the boy he’d been the previous day had vanished. The birdlike call he had heard while heading towards the ferry earlier had been like that. It had been an announcement that something irredeemable was about to be lost.

  The ferry was midway across the river and moving towards him as Oliver came down the slope of the road. Ulysse, seeing him, seemed to grow taller. He put his hands to his hips as though asking, what has kept you? He was coming without ferrying a vehicle.

  They didn’t speak until they were well underway, Ulysse folded into his chair and sucking on an unlit pipe. His tan-coloured clothing, rumpled and blotchy with new and old oil stains, brought to mind a cocoon that had just been vacated. Ulysse broke the silence by saying, What in hell are you doing taking up with that rice-powdered woman? It wasn’t a question but a gruff chiding. That’s no way to do it. There’s no answers to be found at the bottom of a bottle. Or at the bottom of a woman, either.

  Despite his anxiety, Oliver grinned. You’re a joker, he said. He realized that he hadn’t put on his tie, that it lolled from a shirt pocket like a maroon tongue. He swiped at his mouth with the back of a hand; he could smell lipstick and so, likely, he was wearing it. Once again he thought of the hook on the garden door, and wondered now whether it was new, or had it been there for years and used for the same reason it had been used today? To keep Alice from being interrupted while she entertained? He chuckled inwardly at the thought. That steamy old girl. She’d found a way to skin the cat, and right under her parents’ noses. God bless her.

  Listen here, Ulysse said. I just seen Roger Delorme. He says to tell you there’s a chair waiting for you in Alexander, if you want it. He’s getting too old. Gonna quit. He says he’ll train you to get your licence. He’s a master at barbering. You could take over from him, Ulysse said.

  Anger raised the hair at the nape of Oliver’s neck. God damned hell to Christ and Mary. If the barber in Alexander Morris had heard he’d be out of a job, likely everyone in the entire Red River valley knew it too. Everyone had known before him that the hotel was going to be shut down. It’s like I’m a kid to be talked about. Discussed. Someone to be pitied, or humoured, or allowances made for what he might lack. The people around him had the luxury to choose their own way, while his course had been set by circumstances and chance.

  He struck out along the highway, going south, energized with the determination to keep walking until his legs failed him—all night, the next day, if possible. He’d shelter in a farmer’s shed, or a stack of crumbling straw bales, hunger making him stronger, not weak. His body nourishing itself—he’d heard of some prisoners of war gaining weight just thinking of food—but he’d need to find potable water. His hair would clean itself, his unwashed body would become acidic with a natural poison that thwarted germs.

  A vehicle approached from behind and he turned to face it. Why not? he thought, and stuck out his thumb. The young man was taking a load of gravel to Alexander Morris. That’s as far as I’m going, he shouted over the noise of the engine as they took off. I know you, don’t I? he asked, a young man about the age of Sonny Boy, a decent hard-working fella, son of a farmer. I know your dad, Oliver said, despite his vow not to become engaged—a foolhardy vow, he realized, given that he was known up and down the valley. We’re going to Texas next harvest, the young man said. Me and my dad, and my brothers. We’re going to combine and make some good hard cash.

  The youngster drove with his arms hugging the wheel, peering into his destiny, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Texas, as far as that, Oliver thought. He’d spent his young life traversing the goddamned river. They rode the remainder of the way to Alexander Morris in silence, Oliver mulling over the young man’s words. Yes, why not go as far south as Texas?

  When they entered the town, Oliver got out on Main Street, a broad paved street that was shiny with store picture windows, red and blue plastic flags fluttering on the car dealer’s lot. Main Street was lined with garages, cafés, banks, the red-brick post office and elementary school. Kids such as Sonny Boy were attracted to its bowling alley and movie theatre. The dairy owner had bought a machine from Switzerland that dispensed soft swirls of ice cream that were then dipped in chocolate. Two traffic lights had been installed on Main Street when the high school went composite. Kids such as his own, who were driven and bused into town, strolled downtown at lunchtime, frequented the drugstore, the poolroom, the several cafés, and caused a traffic jam.

  Oliver came near the hotel, a three-storey building that had recently been painted, and a neon sign hung over the entrance. Eat Here, Get Gas, the sign invited, which always made him chuckle, but today he thought, the hotel’s got no business dealing in gasoline. The proprietor had his fingers in too many pies, including the barber-shop space he rented to Roger Delorme. Oliver crossed the street, rather than go past the large window and be seen.

  He might have dropped in on Delorme, as he did once a month to have his ears lowered. He might have jawed with the man to see what would transpire. But he recalled too vividly his short and unprofitable stint as a barber’s apprentice in the city. As soon as he’d revealed his barbering experience to the army, they had slapped him into another shop, and he had given up hoping he’d receive some training—mechanics, perhaps medical, something he could put his hand to if he decided not to return to the hotel. He recalled the festering splinters of hair embedded in his shoulders and chest. The need to groom his body with tweezers, his stomach going queasy over the thought of other people’s hair sprouting from his pores.

  Minutes later he had reached the cemetery and the town’s southerly limit, his resolve to keep walking gaining strength. South, and not east, where he might find work on the lakers, as he’d heard of others doing. South to St. Paul, where Metis traders had once taken their hides and furs. Once again, as a vehicle approached, he stuck out his thumb. This time, the driver was going as far as St. Jean.

  Minutes later they arrived at the small community and, on a whim, Oliver went roaming through the several short streets. He soon found what he was looking for. He knew his grandmother’s house was now occupied by a bachelor, a man named Sabourin. He was in his eighties, but it was rumoured he still went trapping. Years ago he’d come to see Oliver at the hotel, to express an interest in acquiring the traps. Oliver had declined, without thinking. He planned on using them, he said. Now he wondered, why hadn’t he let them go? The traps had become badly rusted, the chains almost eaten through in spots. He suspected they were no longer of any use to anyone.

  He went past the house, noting that its yard was overgrown with bushes. In his mind he
saw his grandmother seated on her bed, and spread about her on a patchwork quilt were pieces of fur and leather. Her stomach rested on her knees, her thick lips shone with saliva as she called to him to come and sit beside her. Her voice was broad and soft, its nap always brushed high with good nature. Her words rang in his ears.

  I was blessed to grow up during the golden years, when there were still many animals and the Indians were pacified. Sometimes you couldn’t see the land for the amount of buffalo. The passenger pigeons were as plentiful as the mosquito, then. We caught hundreds of those birds with nets.

  In the golden days there was always enough meat in a pot, elk, rabbit, partridge and deer, too. There was visiting around a fire in the evening, the men talking their stories. Making their plans for the following day. And there was always time for music-making. When the sun went down, the missionary, he came through the camp. He rang his bell to call us to his tent for prayers. I remember this being the sweetest time of all, as we kids came running, going through the dark to pray in the priest’s tent, just as the dew was gathering in the grass.

  The whooping cranes are gone now. Some say that the Fathers conjured the animals and birds away. They prayed away the pigeons because of their all-the-time calling that some people found to be a bother. And the cranes, because they could be a nuisance. Many children were attacked when they got too close to a crane’s nest. The bird could run fast and would peck out your eyes if it was mad enough. Our Fathers prayed away the buffalo, so that the hunters would stay home and become farmers. But I believe that the golden days came to an end because the animals didn’t care to return.

  At that time there were men going around. It was their job to see who had come of age and were old enough to sell their scrip. These agents were given a list by their employers of the names of those who held scrip that hadn’t been taken up yet. They went looking to buy it from young men who thought a few dollars was good pay for a piece of paper. When their pockets were empty, some of them became scouts. Others were hired to ride the country doing to others what had just been done to them. Those boys that went to Montana looking for work soon forgot their prayers. They came back hard or beaten and spoiled by women.