Bow Grip

by Coyote, Ivan E.

“Joseph, has it ever occurred to you that the reason some people never tell you things is that you don’t want to hear them? Getting you to talk about yourself has always been a chore. I don’t know where you get it from, because it certainly wasn’t me, or your father. We used stay up all night sometimes, the two of us, right here, around the old table, just talking. Solving all the world’s problems over a bottle of wine. Your father always stuck up for you, said you were just more private than the rest of us, but I worried it might be something else. Wondered if it was healthy.”

  She paused, waited to see if I had anything to say in my own defense. I didn’t.

  “What I’m trying to tell you is it can be hard for a person to open up to you, Joey, and tell you their heart. Talking is a two-way thing. People can’t trust their secrets to a guy who doesn’t seem to have any of his own.”

  “How can I have secrets in this family? In this town?”

  “I don’t mean those kinds of secrets, Joseph. Maybe dreams would be a better word. I’ve known you for more than forty years, you’re my only son, and I’ve never known what you dream about.”

  “I used to dream about me and Ally getting a place out of town one day. We talked about having a kid, maybe.”

  “And then what happened?” She asked me like she already knew the answer, like a grade school teacher might. I studied her face. She knew about my problem, I could tell by how she was looking at me. Ally had spilled it. Ally was the only person in the entire world I had told, except Rick Davis, and I couldn’t see Rick talking about my low sperm count to my mother, ever.

  “Ally told you about that? I can’t believe it. That is my own personal medical information. Why would she have done that?”

  “I’m her mother-in-law, Joseph. Her family. I always will be, divorce or not. Her own mother passed when she was so young. We were talking about my grandbaby. Who else would she come to? At first she thought it was her who couldn’t….” Her voice trailed off. “Women talk about these kinds of things. She told me how much you wanted a baby.”

  I sat there for a minute, collecting the breadcrumbs on my plate with my finger. I felt like crying right then and there, at my mother’s kitchen table. I remembered those few weeks after the specialist had told me the news, after the million little humiliations inside the tiny room next to his office, the wrinkled girly magazines, the little see-through plastic cup that had Cooper, J. Jr. written on its masking tape label. It was me. Ally had eggs and ovaries, all in working order. I was it. The last Cooper in the line. My sister Sarah and the Broussards would be the end of us.

  I watched as a kind of sly grin crept into my mom’s face. “No wonder you never got that sleazy Sandra Jennings knocked up in high school. We worried about that, you know.”

  I laughed. That part was kind of funny.

  “I have to admit, Mom, I thought about Sandra, too. All this time I thought I’d just been real lucky real early.”

  “I never liked her. Neither did your father. She’s a Horseman now. Three little girls, she married that Aaron kid, didn’t she? The middle one, with the noisy motorcycle. You should count yourself lucky. She’s not as kind on the eyes as she was when you two were little. Hasn’t taken care of herself, and it starts to show. Ages a woman earlier than it does men.”

  I got up and put my plate in the sink. She was starting to get on a roll, and I had stuff to do. I was hitting the road first thing.

  “Can I leave Buck Buck with you? Franco has a new girlfriend and can’t take him. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “Take as long as you like. He’ll be fine. I like the company.”

  “I thought you had plenty of company lately.” I kissed her on the top of her head and half-hugged her. She stood up and turned to lay a full body hug on me. She smelled like lavender, and her bones seemed light in my arms. Mom felt smaller now, and greyer.

  “Drive safely, Joseph. Say hello to Ally for me. And Kathy.”

  “Her name is Kathleen, Mom.”

  “Kathleen. Well, her, too. Give her my regards.”

  “I will.”

  “I like your haircut. You are handsome as ever.”

  “I’m going now, Mother.”

  “So go. Take a loaf of bread with you. Make some sandwiches. Mind you, listen to the weather report. It smells like it could snow.”

  I let myself out the front door, before she got going again with the questions. I tried to sneak out without waking Buck Buck up, but I heard his nails on the hardwood floor as I escaped down the stairs. He sat in the window as I drove away, barking sharply. Then my mom in the window too, shooing him with the tea towel to get down off the couch.

  It was still dark when I got up, and there were fingers of frost on my bedroom window, first time that year. I put on my good grey pants and a white shirt, and my leather coat my good grey pants and a white shirt, and my leather coat instead of the Stormrider. I didn’t know if the cello teacher was going to turn out to look like the matronly grandmother I imagined or Franco’s version, but either way, I felt like I should scrub up.

  I backed the truck up in front of the garage and loaded Ally’s books into the lock box behind the cab. Tossed some clothes into my bag, then hauled the cello out and put it in the passenger seat. It was weird not having the dog underfoot.

  I swung into the library parking lot just after eight-thirty. No one in the place at all except an old lady and a pink-haired woman at the checkout desk. I guessed it was Marion Bradley’s day off. At first, all I could find were books on how to play electric guitar and tin whistle, but after a couple of questions and a bored finger point from the librarian, I found one book on stringed instruments, and a fingering chart for the cello.

  “You learning the cello?” She flashed the scanner’s red light over the stickers on the backs of my books. “Cool. I play the concert marimbas.”

  “Is that a kind of drum?”

  “It’s like a giant xylophone. You should come out and audition for the orchestra. We’re kind of light in the strings section.”

  “I’m just learning. I can’t even read music yet.” I tucked my books under my arm. “Haven’t even figured out the bow part yet. So far I sound like a dying moose on the thing.”

  “Maybe you need to tune it up. It’ll tell you how in the blue book you’ve got. You’ll need a tuning fork, or something.”

  I thanked her and jumped back in my truck. Tune the thing. Why hadn’t I thought of that? And since when did Drumheller have an orchestra?

  Even taking my time along the back roads, it took less than two hours before the road widened and turned to chip seal and then tarmac and fed me on to the #1, straight into Calgary. I smoked as I drove and listened to my new Johnny Cash CD all the way there. Johnny Cash always reminded me of the smell of the stuff my dad used to put in his hair, and the taste of those little wine-tipped cigars, and Old Spice aftershave. He used to put Johnny Cash on the record player in the front room when he and my mom were heading out on the town for the night. She’d be up in their bedroom, fixing herself up. He would swirl the ice cubes in his drink and tell me stories.

  “Never rush a lady out the door while she’s doing herself up,” he’d tell me. “Shows a lack of foresight.”

  The Capri Motor Court and Inn had only non-smoking rooms left. I gave the guy my credit card and he wheezed around behind the counter, printing up the papers. A tiny television droned from his desk in the corner, next to a plate of ravioli impaled by a plastic fork.

  “Check-out time is eleven a.m.” He slid the form across the counter for me to sign. “Your room is around back, overlooking the pool. Which is closed to the public right now, until spring. Ice machine is on the first floor, east side of the building. Off-sales are available from the lounge until eleven p.m., unless she takes a shine to you.” He surveyed me, from the boots up. “And she might just take a shine to you. Cigarette machine is in the hall right outside the lobby.”

  I pulled the bedspread off the bed closest to the h
eater, folded it, and put it into the closet. I had seen more than enough episodes of CSI, when they use that blue light to show where all the bodily fluids were hiding. The place seemed clean enough, though. I liked the smell of the shampoo in the little bottle on the counter. I hauled in the cello and my bag, put them both on the other bed.

  I needed some lunch, a newspaper, and a street map of Calgary. Plus, I was running out of smokes. I left the truck in the parking lot around the corner from the row of identical turquoise motel room doors and walked several blocks until I found a little strip of street with a couple of stores and a tiny restaurant. The guy behind the counter had short dirty-brown dreadlocks and a silver ring through his eyebrow. I ordered and grabbed a table in the sunny window, next to a woman wearing a poncho and scribbling in a sketchbook. None of the newspapers were less than a week old.

  I borrowed a pencil from the guy with the eyebrow-ring and started with the classified ads. There were classical guitar lessons, piano lessons, drum classes, and three serious players looking for a bassist with strong metal influences. No mention of cellos at all. I folded up the paper and ate my chicken salad sandwich. There were green grape slices in it, and the mayonnaise had curry in it, which at first I thought was weird, but I liked it anyways.

  I figured I should get a map and find Allyson’s place. Get it over with. The thought of seeing her hung around my neck like a lead scarf. What would a guy say?

  I called her from a payphone outside a barber’s shop. It picked up right away, went straight to the machine. Both of their voices, speaking in tandem: Hi there, you’ve reached Kathleen and Ally’s place. I hit the number key so I didn’t have to hear the rest of their message, what they were doing instead of answering their phone, what I could leave after the beep.

  “Hi, um, this is Joey. I’m in Calgary for a couple of days, and I’ve got the last of your stuff in my truck. You can call me at the Capri Motor Court, room 119, and leave a message when you’ll be around. I guess that’s it.”

  I hung up hard, wishing I didn’t always sound like such a fucking idiot on the voicemail. For some reason, answering machines always made my heart pound. Something about my words being on a machine; a permanent record of me not knowing what to say.

  I bought a pack of smokes, a map, a box of crackers, some cheese, and a chunk of summer sausage. A paperback novel, and a new toothbrush. Something about a road trip that called for a new toothbrush. Took them all back to the motel. I pulled back the pumpkin-coloured curtains in my room, and blocked the front door open with the wooden wedge I found next to the wastepaper basket. I sat down on the chilly blue bench that was bolted to the concrete sidewalk outside my front door. I smoked, staring at the scabby patch of grass between where the sidewalk ended and the chain link fence around the swimming pool began. The water had been drained out, the bottom covered with a layer of once orange and red leaves, and a flattened Styrofoam hamburger box.

  I missed my dog already.

  I took out the map, the yellow sticky note with Ally’s address on it, and the cowboy’s postcard. If I was reading things right, Ally’s place and the cowboy’s ex-wife lived at completely opposite ends of the city. I’d have to take the truck with me tomorrow. Today, I was going to just chill, read my book. Maybe take a nap.

  The door of the room next to mine opened up and an older man came out, wearing navy blue work pants and a pair of spotless new steel-toed boots. He sat down at the other end of the bench and pulled out a pack of rolling tobacco.

  “You want a tailor-made?” I extended my pack.

  “Don’t mind too much if I do, thank you.”

  He extended a still muscular arm across the bench and I shook a smoke out of my pack for him. Working-man hands. Gold watch, no rings.

  He rattled a box of wooden matches in his left hand, slid it open with his thumb and shook one out. Lit the match by flicking the tip with a wide thumbnail. My mom’s brother, my Uncle Reg, used to be able to do that. Now his hands shook too much from the MS.

  “Name is Hector McHugh.” He dangled the smoke from the corner of one lip and shook my hand.

  “Joseph Cooper. Nice to meet you, Mr McHugh.”

  “Hector, please. No need to mister me.”

  “Hector.”

  He stared past the swimming pool, over the tracks, down the hill towards the city. “Not a bad view from this spot, once it gets dark and the lights go on. I’ve been here for six weeks now.”

  I lit another smoke. So much for quitting. “Six weeks. You working in town for a while?”

  “I’m retired.”

  “You’re living here then?”

  “I would call it more like resting. I’ve found myself at a bit of a crossroads.”

  I nodded. If he wanted me to know what his choice of roads looked like, he’d tell me.

  “I used to work as an expediter, for an outfit out of Edmonton. Diamonds. Northwest Territories are riddled with them. Mining camps and teams of surveyors and drillers all over the place, and they all need supplies. I was the man who found said supplies and acquired them, and saw to it that they were delivered. I kept a small apartment in Edmonton, but the better part of the time I was on the road. It’s a fine job, if you like to see the lesser travelled regions of the country.”

  I just let him go. I could tell he needed someone to listen to him.

  “Had a close call last spring. A little Cessna four-seater. Engine failure, over a particularly desolate stretch of the tundra. I thought that pilot was going to be the last soul I ever set my eyes on. I found myself apologizing to God for all my misdeeds.”

  Hector raised his wiry eyebrows, to see if I was still listening. “And I’m not much of a religious man.”

  “What happened?”

  “The pilot managed to bring the plane down in a little lake, which scared the shit out of me even more than all those pine trees coming at us so fast. I’m not much of a swimmer, you see. But once I got the wind back into me, I hung on to the cushion from my seat, and a guy in a speed-boat picked me up after about ten minutes. Couldn’t move my legs when he dragged me into the boat, though. Water’s still pretty icy in May.”

  “The pilot?”

  “Christopher. His name was Christopher Dawson. Young fellow, full of piss. He told me to hang on to something, that he was going to swim to shore and bring back some help.” Hector leaned over and dropped the cherry of his cigarette butt onto the concrete. Crushed it methodically with the tip of one boot, then slowly bent over to retrieve it. He dropped the butt into a tin bucket next to the bench and reached into his sweater pocket again for his pouch of tobacco.

  “So by the time this guy drags me into his boat and we head off to find Christopher, it was too late. Took three days for them to drag the lake for his body. Coroner said the hypothermia probably got to him almost immediately because he was swimming so fast, and because he was in such good shape.”

  I raised my eyebrow in a question mark.

  “No body fat. No insulation. Swimming exposes the parts of the body that dissipate the most heat into the cold water. Myself, I have a bit of extra around the middle, and I did nothing but float around. That’s what saved me. Being a bit overweight and waiting around to be rescued.” He ran his tongue along the edge of the cigarette paper, gave it a twist, bit the end off, and spat it out. “Haven’t been able to get myself on an airplane since.”

  The highway below us was turning into a caterpillar of headlights.

  “Interest you in a bit of a drink, Joseph? How do you feel about single malt scotch?”

  I folded up my map, stuffed it inside my coat, and followed Hector into the light escaping from his open door.

  Hector’s room was identical to mine, just flipped in reverse. He unwrapped the paper from a clean glass and dropped two ice cubes into it, followed by a healthy shot of scotch. It warmed my throat on its way down and collected in a hot pool in my belly.

  Hector had pulled the bedspread off one of the beds in his room too, and
replaced it with a heavy checkered blanket. His leather shaving kit was laid out neatly beside the little sink outside of the bathroom, his clothes hung up in the closet. Four identical pairs of work pants, denim shirts in several shades of faded, one brown suit, and one white shirt still in the drycleaner’s plastic. The television glowed into the middle of the room, its sound turned right down.

  A brand new laptop shined silver and out of place on the bedside table, its charger plugged into the brass outlet in the base of the reading lamp.

  “Like my new toy?” Hector ran the palm of one hand over the computer. “It’s not even a week old. I’m writing a book.” He looked proud of himself.

  “A book? What’s it about then?”

  “Two fellows who work a ranch together.”

  “A cowboy type thing?”

  “Something of the sort.” Hector pulled the straight back chair out from the little desk, dragged it on two legs into the centre of the room. “Have a seat, Joseph, and tell me what brings you to the Capri Motor Court. You in town for business?”

  “Pleasure, I guess. If pleasure is the opposite of business. I run a garage in Drumheller. I’m just in the city for a couple of days. A holiday, I guess. Couple people I need to see. And I’m looking for a cello teacher.”

  “You’ve got kids then?”

  I shook my head. Guess I didn’t much look the musical type. “It’s for me, actually. I’m just learning. Don’t really know which end to start with, though, so I need a little help.”

  “You’re the first cello player I ever met.”

  I looked directly at Hector for the first time. What was left of his silver hair was cropped real short, almost shaved. His moustache and beard were neatly clipped, all straight lines. I put him in his early sixties.

  “You’re the first writer I ever met.” I rattled the ice cubes in my glass.

  He took off his sweater and hung it on the edge of the little suitcase rack next to the desk, then leaned over with the bottle of scotch and poured us both another shot. His hands were steady. Not a hard boozer, unless he was one of those guys who you could never tell were always plastered. Franco used to be like that, in his early days.