by Fred Stenson
“ ’Lo, Bill. How are you this morning?”
“Didn’t sleep. Fine otherwise.”
“You stayed in camp, didn’t you? What did you find to do all night?”
“Usual mid-week bunga-bunga party.”
It wasn’t a good sign that Houle smirked. Ordinarily he was a hearty laugher.
“I’ll cut to the chase here, Bill. I’m sure we’re both busy. I heard something last night at the open house. It was a woman telling a man that you never lie to them. Bill the sulphur man never lies to us, she said. They were Native people.”
“Did I miss a memo? Are we supposed to lie to them?”
“I’m kind of serious here, Bill. It reminded me of something else I heard from a community woman.” Houle picked a sheet off his desk and shot it into a tray. “Something about you saying our tailings pond leaks.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“So you remember saying something. By the way, I’m being less than transparent. It wasn’t two women. It was the same woman twice. Mrs. Calfoux.”
“Right.”
“So when Mrs. Calfoux suggested our pond might leak, you said?”
“Oh, hell, I don’t know. Something like that it wasn’t impossible.”
Houle flipped his hands over, a pair of puppies exposing their bellies. “So you did suggest to her that our pond leaks.”
“Theo, look. This happened because Dion told me I should go talk to the woman. I tell Dion whenever he asks that I don’t like talking to locals. I’d rather be left out of that side of things.”
“You appeared to enjoy yourself last night.”
“I went to a corner to eat. Marie Calfoux came to talk.”
“Yes, the woman in question came to talk. Our pond doesn’t leak.”
“When she said tailings ponds, she meant all tailings ponds, not just ours. If the context matters.”
“And you know for a fact that other ponds leak, do you?”
“Come off it, Theo. One project has a moat around their pond to catch leaks and put them back.”
“They do that so the pond doesn’t leak. Obviously.”
Bill sat back and folded his arms.
“It seems to me a matter of loyalty,” said Houle, “to our company and our industry.”
“You know, Theo, I don’t like being told what to say and not say. I don’t like being told who I can talk to either.” He realized he was angry, but it was impossible not to be. Houle was being an asshole. “If you’re working up to telling me I’m fired, let’s go there. You have the power, get on with it.”
“I thought you liked your job.”
“I do, and you know it.”
“It sounds like you’re ready to walk.”
“A long time ago, someone told me never make a deal unless you’re willing to walk away.”
“This isn’t a deal—it’s a job. And a damn good one.”
“A job is a deal of sorts.”
Something in Houle’s demeanour changed. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said. “I’m not questioning your ability. All I want is for you to be more circumspect about what you say to the people you talk to around here.”
“That sounds like what I said I don’t like.”
“Is it my job, really, to give you everything you like?”
“My job is running your sulphur plant. Why don’t I go do that?”
“You’re pretty cocky today.”
“How would you like me to be?”
The frozen air soon cooled him off and left him feeling stupid. Marie was relaying to his boss things that he said. It probably meant she had no interest in him beyond that; she’d been playing him like a harp. It was also true that she had told him she wasn’t trying to snag him, and had called him sad and unattractive. If he kept on thinking she was romantically interested, who was to blame?
Bill forgot to avoid the place where Johnny Bertram was working. Johnny downed his tools.
“You don’t look so good, Billy. They didn’t fire you, did they?”
Bill groped for a witty remark. Johnny grew more serious.
“Jump in the truck.” Inside the cab, he fiddled with the dials on his dash, made heat pour. “Did I make a bad joke?”
“Pretty good one, actually. I think I came pretty close to being on the job market.”
“What did you do? Your plant hasn’t blown up. You haven’t killed any neighbours. I doubt you steal.” He thumped the dash with his big mitt. “Poontang! Has to be poontang.”
The antique word made Bill laugh. “Sort of correct,” he said. “Though, for the record, no sex was asked for or received.”
“That’s good. I’d hate to think anyone got laid up here.”
They sat for another minute.
“Harassment would fit,” Johnny said philosophically. “No result. But you can still get fired for it.”
“I didn’t get fired.”
“Maybe that’s why you look so sad. Just about had the big severance package in your hands, and they said you have to stay.”
“Thanks for the warm-up.”
“It’s something about the woman in the village, isn’t it? You can hire Indians, just not sleep with them. Pretty good rule, actually.”
“See you later, Johnny.”
Back in his office, he realized he hadn’t told Houle he was going to Calgary. Fuck him. Bill got his crew sorted and left.
Between Fort Mac and Edmonton, clouds hung low, and the snow kept moving out of the trees and across the lanes. Semis ripped the drifts into whiteouts. Patches of black ice felt like the earth opening. Still the maniacs sped. If Bill needed further intimations of mortality, there were plenty in the ditches. White crosses stuck out of the snow, some hung with plastic wreaths. Stuffed animals, booze bottles.
It wasn’t the best time for thinking, but he did anyway. A woman gives him tea twice, they share a few laughs, and what? And nothing. It was a simple enough thing. He should be able to stuff it in his bulging live-and-learn file and move on. But here he was, full of boyish sorrow—and humiliation. It had been so easy for her to get him to talk about the plant, to say things that she could then quote back to his boss—and anyone else she pleased. What kind of simpleton had he become?
On a two-lane section, a truck coming from the south swerved into his lane. He hit his brakes and started to slide. Then the truck was past him and in the ditch.
Bill drove onto the shoulder, clicked on his flashers, walked back. The truck was mired in the snow at the edge of a little patch of spruce trees, but it was right side up. The door swung and the driver jumped out. He did not limp or appear to bleed as he walked to his truck’s front end, where a tree had pushed a dent in his hood. The guy flailed his arms, kicked the tree; his shouts pared down by wind sounded like a bee in a can. The absence of gratitude made Bill want to deliver the blow that fate had spared him. But the guy was large and the hurt would be on Bill. He went back to his truck and kept driving.
It fell dark where the boreal started changing to farmland. Enough sky cleared for the moon to light the snow in the fields, the cross-hatch of animal tracks. His thoughts were finally off Marie, but they’d gone to the equally sad topic of whether Houle meant to fire him. Story was that many engineers had been laid off in Alberta during the economic disaster a few years back, and that they were shipping their resumés by the bushel to places like Waddens. Maybe old Theo was sending feelers back to see if any of these young geniuses wanted to be a sulphur boss.
Retire was something Bill had sworn never to do. No pension or fat severance. No boiling palm-tree town in an American swamp or desert. When he thought retirement, he saw fleets of bellied geezers lining the mahogany at a faux-tropical bar, turning like birds each time the buxom barmaid passed. Endless casinos.
At a 24-hour truckstop in Edmonton, the waitress called him Junior, served him over-easy instead of sunny side up, white toast instead of brown. Off again down the QEII. Three hours to Calgary.
North of Red Deer, a ranti
ng blizzard hit. Ice balled the wipers and built on the windshield. Pythons of white sped by his doors and across the black gloss. Cars hit the ditch like toys with dead batteries. When he crept into Red Deer, he’d had enough. So many had given up before him that hotel after hotel down Gaetz Avenue had the No above Vacancy lit. Ceasing to look for comfort, he sought comfort’s opposite, and the strategy led him to Sonny’s Motor Inn. The room had it all: curtains that did not meet; the ghosts of ten thousand cigars; TV remote in three pieces; dripping shower head; iron-stained toilet; bed in the shape of a ruined back.
Before sleep, Bill thought to phone the Calgary hotel and tell them he was weathered in. A silky voice told him that, because of the deep discount he was receiving and the lateness of the hour, they would not be able to re-credit his credit card.
For some reason, giving up the money without a fight put him in the mood to phone Jeannie.
“Bill!” Her enthusiasm shook him. So genuinely glad to hear his voice he almost cried. She filled him in on the Hatfield Corners weather: two inches of fresh snow, minus eighteen by the thermometer out the kitchen window.
“Did you get the box? Dad’s binder?”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“Thanks, I bet. I knew you were mad when you didn’t answer my calls.”
“Me and telephones.”
“Soon, you can communicate with me in a less personal way. I’m getting internet.”
“On the farm?”
“It’s expensive. Satellite. But I don’t want to get bushed.”
He told her where he was and about the meeting; about his days off.
“Are you saying you’re coming down?”
“It’s up to you. If you want company.”
“Course I want company. When will you be here?”
“I don’t know exactly. Tomorrow night?”
“For supper?”
“I guess so. Sure. What time?”
“Whenever you get here, we’ll eat.”
In the morning, the highway south was closed. Ploughing and sanding in progress. By the time the highway opened, the panel on corrosion was about to start. At best, Bill was ninety minutes away.
By quarter to eleven, he made it to the Calgary hotel. He entered the hallway outside the conference room and saw black-tie waiters setting up the second coffee service. After a muffled blast of applause inside, double doors flew open and men and women streamed out: a mixture of city suits and vinyl-looking leather that Bill found familiar—or did until he realized he was only recognizing types.
He joined the line for coffee and pastries. Conversation circles were forming down the hall. He wandered the alley between them. It had been three years since he’d last attended one of these, but the interval was apparently crucial, overlapping the retirement or death of the world of engineers he had known. He didn’t see a soul he knew.
He was walking in the direction of the parkade elevator when he saw something different: a lone circle of old men. Leading with his coffee cup, Bill parted his way among them, and a hearty welcome burst forth. A round of handshakes and backslaps.
Surveying the faces, Bill felt sad and damp. The pinkness of them. The white-tonsured shiny baldness. The odd bandage over what was probably skin cancer. They loved that he was with them, and it had to do with his relative youth. He would forever be Billy, a hard-charging youngster when they had been the powerful ones: the silverbacks of the oil jungle.
Now, they took turns reminding him to think about retirement.
“Don’t wait till your health goes.”
“Quit while you can get it up.”
When he asked what they were doing, they looked down or away. Someone mentioned golf. Sol and Hugo, standing together with the railroad map of southern Britain printed on their noses, were living posters for what they’d found to do in their retirement years.
A guy Bill only vaguely remembered started into a story about how he and two buddies were buying propane from little prairie plants and trucking it to remote spots beyond the natural gas lines. They’d even scored some federal recession money to hire kids to do the driving. The story embarrassed the others. Work was not supposed to be a nostalgic hobby. When retirement came, you were supposed to fuck off to the golf course where you belonged.
In the wake of the propane story, Bill asked if Lance Evert was around. This was met with silence. Don Giotto put a meaty hand on Bill’s shoulder and steered him away.
“Hate to be the one to tell you, Billy, but Lance has cancer. You know how he is—soon as he got the diagnosis, he researched it, started eating broccoli by the yard.” Don pretended to laugh, took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed at his red-veined eyes. “But he’s not going to beat it, Billy. You should go see him. He likes company. And Judy could use the break.”
Don patted him on the back and departed. The crowd was moving into the meeting room again. Bill tried to remember the agenda, what came next. He took a few steps and stopped.
In the underground parkade, he sat in his truck. In the exit’s golden mouth, a hooker strolled back and forth: fishnet stockings under a puffy faux fur. As he emerged onto the avenue, Bill was trying to tell himself that he was on his way to Lance and Judy’s house in Brentwood. When he passed the city limits going west, he knew he wasn’t going to Jeannie’s either.
8
Ryder Farm, 1961
TOM HAD BEEN SOWING OATS all day in the meadow northeast of the house. A near-windless day and pleasant until the gas moved in after lunch and hung in the bowl where he drove the tractor back and forth. The rest of the day was spent getting dizzy and clearing his head, arguing with himself whether he should quit or finish. He thought of Hughie McGrady’s dead ewes and how Hughie almost died along with them. It could happen so easily. It might be happening now.
The field was small, a one-day job, and he stuck with it until he was finished. For the last while, he was squinting into little pools of tractor light, looking for the lines. Back at the house, he found the girls and Billy sitting at the table. There was nothing on it but his dinner on a plate, his knife and fork. The kids, all three, were scowling at him.
“What’s going on? Where’s your mother?”
Donna looked at Jeannie, and Jeannie spoke. “She told us we had to sit here and wait for you. She’s got something she wants to tell us.” Donna said, “Mom’s been crying all night.”
Billy looked like he had been crying too. He looked frightened.
Tom went through the arch and knocked on the door of their bedroom. “Ella, I’m here.”
He heard nothing back so he went to the table and sat, picked up his knife and fork, and cut into a slice of cold roast beef. “Wait with me a minute, all right?” he said to the kids.
Then Ella came. Her face and eyes were red. It came to him that someone must have died. Probably her father, who hadn’t been well for years. Still, it was an odd thing to do: to not tell the children, to make them wait.
“What’s going on?” Tom asked her.
She had a handkerchief in her hand. She lifted it and pushed it against her eyes.
“I’ve made a decision,” she said. “You’re right. We have to go.” She ran back into the bedroom. The door slammed.
“Right about what? Go where?” Jeannie glared in the direction her mother had gone.
Donna said, “She means leave the farm, right, Dad?”
“That’s what she means. She means we should move.”
Jeannie was standing. Her arms were rigid and her fists clenched. “That’s not what she means. It can’t be. Mom would never.”
“She has to,” said Donna. “She just said it.”
“Oh, shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Jeannie, slow down. I’ll talk to your mother, but I’m sure that’s what she means. That’s why she’s upset.”
“You’re making her.”
“The hell I am. It’s her farm—her parents’ farm. Her decision. But it’s the r
ight decision. We can’t stay here being sick. We’ll wind up like the pigs and calves.”
Now Billy was bawling.
“Come here, Billy. You can sit on my knee while I eat.”
Billy shook his head. He slid off his chair and ran into the dark. They could hear him banging on the bedroom door until his mother let him in.
“This is a damn nuthouse!” Jeannie stomped out of the room, then loudly up the stairs.
“You can go too if you like,” Tom said to Donna.
Her face was stern at first but then she smiled. “I’m glad we’re going.”
She stayed sitting with him until his plate was empty.
9
Casino
BILL SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed. He had changed out of his suit and into casual clothes. All that remained was to go downstairs, find a cash machine, and walk the rows of VLTs until he spotted one that had a look of promise.
He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and stared at it. He had hoped there would be no reception here by the mountains, but there was. He poked out the number. Jeannie answered. He pictured her in the farm kitchen, holding the black receiver to her ear. He told her he would not be coming to the farm. Not tonight. Not this weekend.
“Shit, Bill.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pocketed the phone, got to his feet, and went to the door.
PART TWO
In the school library, the boy found the book. It had a black cloth cover and was full of drawings of tools and machines.
The first picture was a bolt and nut. The bolt stood straight with the nut next to it. There was nothing else on the page. The grooves—threads, his father called them—rose up the bolt but were not straight across. If the bolt was huge and you were tiny, you could walk around in the grooves and get to the top.
Over two days, the boy drew a copy of the nut and bolt. When he was done, he folded it and slid it into the snap wallet chained to his belt. At home, when supper was over and his mother and sisters finished dishes and went to the living room, he unfolded the picture in front of his father. After looking in silence, his father beckoned. They put their winter coats on.