The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  “That jacket’s got an electronic gadget on it, it’ll shriek like a dying rabbit when I hit the street, but I’ll be running full out when I activate the detector. I’ll see you about the time the bus is due.”

  “Jee, you don’t have to . . .” I began, but she was swallowed up by the lights of the store.

  I paced around the bus stop for what seemed like forever. Just as the bus was pulling up and as I was trying to decide whether to catch it or wait for Jee, the bus only ran every two hours, she came bounding out of the park across the street, and pushed into line in front of me.

  “Everything’s cool,” she said, “I think I lost them. There was a young guy chasing me, but I hid under a parked car. She pointed to an oil stain from the thigh to the knee of her jeans. When we were settled at the back of the bus she produced the bomber jacket from under the bulky sweater she was wearing.

  “We’ll take a rock and smash that tag off it,” she said.

  “I can’t take it home,” I said. “How would I explain it?”

  “Say I gave it to you. Something I’ve outgrown. I’ll come by if you want and show your mother how much taller and broader across the shoulders I am now. I’ll tell her I’ve grown six inches in the last year.”

  Jee had an answer for everything. The explanation worked. My mother was on her way to work and wasn’t really interested in what kind of jacket Jee was giving me, just one less item for her to worry about.

  It was after school let out for the summer that we met Frank and Angie. We were hanging out at the local cafe, spinning around on the counter stools, nursing Cokes and smoking, when they came in. They got out of a telephone company truck, one of those big white ones with blue lettering, with a hydraulic ladder on the back.

  “I’m on call twenty-four hours,” Frank explained later. “If there’s a storm I have to get up at 3:00 A.M. and repair the lines after trees fall on them or the wind blows them down.”

  Frank and Angie walked into the Drop Inn Cafe and took one of the two tables in the center of the room. There were four booths down the outside wall and ten counter stools. They ordered large Cokes with ice. We could feel Frank staring at us. He was stocky with a red complexion, heavy red hair to his collar and a walrus mustache the same color. His eyes were a deep-set green-brown. Angie was very slim, wearing tight jeans and ankle-high black motorcycle boots, and a well-worn denim jacket. Her hair was a shining bay color, worn very short in a pixie cut. Her features were delicate, her skin clear and pink, she had blue eyes and a pinprick of a dimple to the left of her mouth.

  Jee glanced over her shoulder a couple of times, once she spun slowly on her stool, boldly returning Frank’s stare. As they were lighting cigarettes she stepped off her stool, her long hair swishing side to side making a quiet sensuous sound, and moved toward them.

  “Got a cigarette?” she asked

  “Sure,” said Frank, taking the pack from his shirt pocket and holding it out to her. As Jee took a cigarette, Frank said to her, “Why don’t you and your friend join us?” We did.

  “I see you’re a collector,” Frank said, staring at Jee. She shrugged her shoulders, not understanding. “You’ve got cigarettes right in your pocket there,” he pointed at her jean jacket, “yet you’re smoking mine.”

  “Yeah,” said Jee, smiling easily. “Other people’s taste better. I like to stock up. One of my great fears is that I’ll run out of cigarettes.”

  “Used to be mine, too,” said Angie, “then I met Frank, and now he takes care of me.”

  I realized when Angie spoke, she had a breathy, childlike voice, that she was barely older than us, maybe eighteen. Frank was twenty-five at least, maybe closer to thirty.

  “How long have you two been together?” Jee asked.

  “Couple of years,” said Frank. “I found her hitching on a back road out near Agassiz Prison; she looked to me like a dangerous escaped prisoner so I picked her up, took her captive and we’ve been together ever since. We got married three months ago, the day she turned eighteen. We got ourselves an A-frame way back in the foothills, no neighbors for two miles. We’re renting but we’ve got an option to buy if it stays private. Privacy’s very important to us.”

  I didn’t really like Frank, though Jee seemed to, and Angie did little but smoke and smile her little tic of a smile when someone said something that interested her. I didn’t like the way Frank looked at Jee, or at me for that matter, there was something commanding about his stare, something vaguely frightening, yet I wondered if I could resist it if it were turned full on me. I also didn’t like the way he treated Angie, as if she were his personal property, something bought and paid for.

  “I do most of Angie’s thinking for her,” he said at one point, while Angie nodded agreement. “She pretty well does as I tell her.”

  I kicked Jee’s foot under the table but she scarcely glanced at me, her eyes were locked on Frank’s face, as she pulled smoke deep into her lungs.

  “You should come visit us some time,” Frank said as we were leaving.

  “I thought you liked privacy?” I said.

  He scowled at me, and I felt my heart rate increase.

  “We make exceptions.” He gave us directions, drew a little map on a napkin. “Or you could visit Angie during the day. She gets a little lonely up there sometimes, and she’s got all the latest records. I set up a charge for her at the record store, and he pointed across the street at the blinking sign The Platinum Disc.

  “There’s something creepy about them,” I said to Jee, as we walked out of town. “I didn’t like the way he stared at us, at you.”

  “I think he’s sexy,” Jee said.

  “Well, I do, too, in a kind of dangerous way.”

  “And imagine being like Angie, having your own house, getting to stay home all day and play records, being looked after, not have to rip people off for bus fare, or bum cigarettes.”

  “Everything has a price,” I said, but left it at that, not adding that I wondered what price Angie was paying.

  We did visit though, a couple of afternoons later. It was nearly a five-mile walk. As we traveled the bush got denser, the sky more sheltered, the public road turned into a trail which ended when a private road began, the only visible tracks were of Frank’s telephone company truck. The private road was heavily posted. NO TRESPASSING. NO HUNTING. PRIVATE PROPERTY. PATROLLED BY SMITH AND WESSON.

  The private road was damp and mossy, willows grasped at our hair as we walked. Ferns plucked at the legs of our jeans; the road narrowed. Ropes of moss dangled from cypress branches. Cheeky columbines, Indian paintbrush, and some waxy yellow flowers grew in the center of the road. We came round a sharp bend into a clearing and there was the A-frame, brown as sand, its windows running from floor to the pointed peak of the building, gave off a bluish light, a cloud reflected in the topmost triangle of glass.

  We were at the back of the building. There was a large deck, newly stained, furnished with white wooden chairs and a white picnic table. We walked up the four stairs to the deck, crossed it and peered into the living room through the sliding glass doors. We had to put our hands on either side of our faces to deflect the light. An expensive black leather sofa faced us. There was a stone fireplace in the background. The deck narrowed and continued around to the front of the house where a new red Datsun was parked, and the spot where the telephone company truck usually rested was clearly defined. In front, a heavily forested hillside rose at a harsh angle. The front was also glass panels with a large cedar door in the middle, the kitchen was to the right of the door. We found Angie at the sink doing dishes and listening to music at high volume from a new hi-fi set in the living room.

  She started when we tapped on the glass until we attracted her attention, but she seemed happy to see us. Inside, the smell of cedar prickled my nose. Angie offered us coffee, or a choice from an assortment of soft drinks in a startlingly large refrigerator, but before we could make a choice she interrupted to say, “No, why don’t I make u
s drinks? There’s this drink Frank taught me, a daiquiri, it has lime it in. I’d never seen a lime until Frank came home with them. It’s delicious.”

  Angie got out three small glasses and a glass pitcher into which she measured white rum, lime juice, stirred in sugar, then took the pitcher to the fridge, which on command dispensed crushed ice into the pitcher. A minor miracle to us, in Darktown an apple box nailed to the wall outside a north window served as ice box, fridge and food storage unit.

  “Take it easy,” Angie said, after Jee drained half her glass in a swallow. “It tastes like fruit juice but it’s got a kick to it.” It was my first taste of liquor and maybe Jee’s, too, though she would never admit it if it was. The three of us smoked and sipped daiquiris.

  “Do you get lonely out here, so far from everything?” Jee asked.

  “No. Frank takes good care of me. We need to be off by ourselves. Sometimes we get . . . pretty noisy.”

  She smiled her tic of a smile indicating with an upward movement of her head, the upstairs bedroom. Earlier we had been given a tour of the house which stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  “I haven’t cleaned up there yet,” Angie said, “besides, there are things up there you guys shouldn’t see,” and she smiled mysteriously. “At least until we get to know each other better.”

  We had two daiquiris each and listened to Angie’s records. The drinks seemed to make Angie more talkative. Jee’s cheeks flushed and she laughed more loudly than usual. For me, the room seemed occasionally to fall off its axis, instead of feeling happy, I felt anxious and a little depressed.

  “You’re welcome to stay until Frank gets home,” Angie said. “He’ll be here about five.”

  “No. I have to get home,” I said, before Jee could argue, though it was a lie, my mother would be at work until midnight.

  “I should start dinner,” Angie said. “Frank’s teaching me to cook.” She laughed. “I’ve had some real disasters. Frank gets . . . annoyed when that happens, and,” and she smiled her curious little smile again, and bent to pull an orange mesh sack of potatoes from a cupboard drawer.

  Jee dawdled on the walk home, hoping, I’m sure, that we’d meet Frank. I walked fast, breathing the ferny air, often getting a half block or more ahead of Jee.

  “There’s something eerie about both of them,” I said to Jee later in the evening. We were sitting on the rickety steps outside the cottage where I lived. My mouth was furry and I had a slight headache.

  “I think they’re great,” Jee said. “Imagine having a sexy guy like Frank to take care of you. It would be like heaven.”

  “There’s something mean about him,” I said.

  “Guys are like that,” Jee said. “I wonder what’s upstairs that she wouldn’t show us? Fuck movies? Sex toys. There’s this whole store in Vancouver sells crotchless panties, oils, creams, and fucking dildoes big as your arm. One of the DeJong twins brought a catalog to school full of pictures of vibrators, leather panties and bras, and photographs of naked girls with their hands tied, giving blow jobs. I wonder if . . .” but Jee’s voice trailed off.

  “Whatever it is I wouldn’t want to see it,” I said, which wasn’t really true, but I felt somehow obligated to argue.

  “You’re sure a spoilsport, Cathy. You’ll never take a risk, you’ll live in a slum like this for the rest of your life. You’re not a leader, you’re a follower, actually you’re not even a good follower.”

  “Thanks a lot. But what’s any of that got to do with whether I like Frank and Angie?”

  “It’s your attitude. You go with me when I steal smokes, makeup, clothes. When do you ever risk anything? Frank’s a risk. All guys are risks. Angie took a risk and now she’s taken care of for life.”

  I couldn’t articulate my fear, and I told myself that maybe that was all it was, fear. So I said nothing more.

  At Jee’s insistence we visited Angie again a few days later.

  “Frank was real pissed off I didn’t insist you guys stay for dinner,” Angie said. “He must have just missed you. He even drove back to look for you and we went into town that evening hoping to see you guys at the cafe.”

  Jee and Angie had daiquiris again. I drank Orange Crush over a full tumbler of ice cubes. It was while I watched them laughing, chattering, smoking, or rather when Angie went to the fridge for the pitcher of daiquiris that I noticed what it was about her that made me uneasy. It was the way she walked with an exaggeratedly correct posture, like an old person with fused discs. She moved carefully as if she was in pain, something that thrilled me as much as it frightened me. However, Angie showed no signs of pain when she threw herself into Frank’s arms when he came through the door. She had been barefoot when we arrived, but after a while, in preparation for Frank’s arrival she put on her black boots and a creamy satin blouse that tucked into her jeans, showing off her tiny breasts. I noticed that she made a point of not inviting us up to the bedroom while she changed.

  “Frank likes me to look a certain way when he gets home,” she said, “and he doesn’t ask that much for all he does in return.”

  After leaping into his arms, Angie kissed him passionately, wrapping her legs around his waist. Frank gripped her denimed ass with his stubby-fingered hands that had little tufts of red hair at each knuckle. Frank did most of the cooking. He was mildly impatient with Angie’s ineptness in the kitchen.

  “Can you cook?” he asked Jee at one point, after Angie had sliced a tomato up and down instead of crossways.

  “Try me,” said Jee ambiguously, a little drunk, as was Angie.

  We ate on the deck. Frank had changed into Bermuda shorts and as I watched, the red hair on his legs was turned golden by the sun. Afterwards, we sat around drinking coffee and smoking. Frank brought out a bottle of Southern Comfort, along with thimble-sized glasses. I refused because I didn’t like the aftermath of the daiquiris on the previous visit, plus I knew liquor made me lose some control, and I didn’t feel this was a situation when I could afford any loss of control.

  Later, as the sun was setting into the forest, as Angie returned from the washroom, Frank pulled her into his lap in the big, white deck chair. He kissed her for a long time, arranging her body, his left hand gripping a breast, not fondling but clutching, his right caressing her satin blouse, the belly of her jeans, before settling into the crotch of her jeans, his big hand spreading her already open legs.

  I felt terribly uncomfortable. Like a spy. I glanced at Jee, who, a forgotten cigarette burning uncomfortably close to her fingers, stared at them as if conjured. I could see that Angie was responding; she had one of her small hands down the front of Frank’s shorts. They were kissing ferociously now, Angie thrusting her pelvis against Frank’s big hand.

  I scraped back my chair and stood up. Frank broke the kiss, smiled at us past Angie’s head as she melted into his neck.

  “I was going to offer to drive you ladies back,” he said, “but it appears we have a situation here.”

  He stared boldly at us while continuing to rub Angie’s crotch. Jee took a deep drag on her cigarette. “How about if we see you early evening tomorrow at the cafe? Unless, of course, one or both of you would like to join us upstairs?”

  He heaved himself up out of the chair, Angie nestled in his arms, licking his neck. He stared searchingly at us as he walked into the house. I took Jee’s hand and pulled her away.

  “No, thank you,” I said, speaking for both of us. Jee frowned at me as I led her down the steps to the grass and in the direction of the road.

  Jee was sullen on the walk home.

  “You could have gone if you wanted to,” I said.

  “And leave you sitting, or to walk home by yourself.”

  “Would you have if I wasn’t there?”

  “I think so. The idea’s so scary, and so exciting. And Frank’s so sexy.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Different strokes,” said Jee.

  “What would three people do?”

&nbs
p; “If you have to ask you’ve got no business being there.”

  “You’re so experienced,” I said nastily. “Seriously, how could you know?”

  “Instinct,” said Jee. “Instinct, and willingness to take risks.”

  Frank and Angie were at the cafe next evening.

  “Sorry about last night,” Frank said, “but a call from nature always takes top priority.”

  Angie smiled her little tic of a smile. Frank treated us to sundaes, pineapple for me, chocolate for everyone else. Then we walked around the small shopping district.

  “Let me buy you each a little present of apology,” Frank said. He seemed to know exactly what pleased us, a carton of cigarettes for Jee, eight packs of twenty-five, an expensive lipstick for me. I almost went for a shade called White Peach that would have set off my dark complexion, but at the last moment I remained traditional and chose Ripe Raspberry.

  A few nights later, the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend—we’d begin our final year of high school on Tuesday—Jee and I hung around the cafe until closing, both hoping that Frank and Angie would show up, at the same time I was scared that they would. We walked off into the night, breathing the cool, damp air, hearing the gravel crackle under our shoes, the occasional scuttle of an animal in the underbrush. An almost full moon illuminated our way. We giggled, smoked, walked, drawn it seemed to Frank and Angie.

  As we neared the clearing the glow was like a sunrise, a forest fire.

  “Do you think it’s a fire?” Jee asked. This was not our first night visit, but on the two previous occasions the building had been dark, the moon reflected off the topmost triangle of window. We had walked around the building. The Datsun and the telephone company truck were cold and dewy. Once, a raccoon had clacked across the deck while we stood statue-like on the lawn, staring. We watched the house for a long time, imagining we heard things, groaning, crying, the more violent sounds of love.

  Tonight, the house was totally illuminated, and the sounds ensuing were not like anything we’d heard, or imagined. We stopped just out of view of the house. I thought the sounds were of a bird, or birds, clattering, flopping, crying out to escape. Jee gripped my hand. We advanced across the lawn to the edge of the deck. The night was yellow and black. Every light in the A-frame was on. Music was playing on the hi-fi, Donovan, Rita Coolidge, loud enough to carry to the edge of the deck but not overpowering.