Linda’s a shark, needs to be as the director of the drop-in centre. She and Clarisse are chalk and cheese, but they have the same inner toughness. I’ve seen Linda roaring like a bear mother, standing up for her cubs. The fact that her cubs are the city’s worst-off citizens don’t matter none. Linda’s stood down nervous cops and stoned-out teenagers twice her size. Just last week, with folks crowding the streets for the Stampede, she walked out in the half-dark of late evening to the benches along the river, and with me at her back, calm as a cuke she talked some guy on crack into letting go of the little girl he’d grabbed. Today she’s all slicked up, and even with all the lines on her face, she looks like she was born the same year as Clarisse. I know that ain’t so. Clarisse is at least fifteen years younger — her teeth are knocked crooked from Gavin’s beatings, her skin’s gone pale with staying indoors, but she’s out here, sitting in the sunlight. Laughing.
While we wait for the chucks to get ready, we watch the bull riding. When two men on Quarter horses lope into the ring seconds before a bull erupts from the chutes, Aidan is derisive.
“Two guys riding in circles? For real? It’s a joke, right?”
It’s the first time the kid’s opened his mouth all day. First time I’ve heard that jeering teenage attitude from him, too. “Don’t be a fool,” I say. My tone is sharper than I mean. “Those pickup riders saved my life more’n once.”
Beside me, Aidan pulls away. Damnation. Didn’t mean to scare the kid. Eight seconds later, the horses lope up either side of the plunging bull. One man gets an arm around the bull rider, who swings onto the horse and then to the ground, jumping from a moving rump. The second rider moves his horse close to the wild-eyed bull, reaches down and releases the cinch around its belly with a backhanded flip. Clarisse half-covers her eyes and gasps. She’s right. It’s scary, but it’s poetry.
“All these years,” I say to her. “All these years, and I bet this is the first time you actually come to a rodeo.”
“Gavin wouldn’t let me.” Ah. Yeah, Gavin was always jealous. The bugger never bothered getting good at anything, hated to see it in others. Even his own brother. “And now with him gone up, I wanted to see what it is you’ve been telling me about. All these years,” she says, leaving me flat-footed with wonder. Ah, women.
“Every one of those guys has a limp,” Aidan observes, oblivious of his mother.
“Yep. Even the rookies walk as if they ache.” I clasp my belt buckle. “Bull riders have real jelly bellies, intestinal problems, their guts gone to hell from years of jolts.” Aidan examines the ginger ale in my hand, then the bulge where my gut hangs over my leather belt. I nod. “Yep.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“Quit what? Drinkin’? Or bulls?”
Aidan shrugs again, his face wooden.
“Ask me straight out if you want a straight answer. To answer — both — it’s something about survivin’ past thirty.” A sideways flicker at Clarisse. She don’t notice, she’s so caught up in watching the horses in the ring. “At my age, it’s better to be the pickup man.” Aidan scrunches his nose in confusion. I relent and sigh. “I’ve told you before, bud. About the bull tried to take my eye out.” I lower my voice and lean closer to him so Clarisse can’t hear. “Makes a guy think twice. The girls might not think I’m so sexy if I wore an eye patch. Or worse.” I hitch at my jeans. His eyes widen. A few minutes later, I catch him looking reflectively at his mother, and I’m guessing he’s totting up the black eyes and split lips.
A breeze rolls in, clouds tumbling and roiling as the afternoon slides by.
“Gonna rain,” says Aidan, tilting his face skyward.
“Hours yet, honey,” Clarisse says. “Put on your ballcap. You’ll get burnt.” She leans back, puts her feet up on the empty bench in front of her. Aidan drops an arm over her shoulder. She turns to me. “Did I tell you how I got this hat?”
“No. What’s so special about it? Other’n bein’ a cowboy hat and pink, and makin’ you look cute as a button.”
“Cut it out, Troy.”
“Sorry. Tell the story.”
“The week we moved to Calgary, I went downtown to The Bay and I saw it in the window. So I bought it. For myself.” She stops and waits.
I have a swift full-colour image in my head of Clarisse in pink satin shirt and jeans, striding into the department store, setting off firecrackers and yodelling while she lassoes a pink straw hat from a mannequin. She might have done it as a teenager.
“I don’t get it. What’s the big deal about a hat?”
“Gavin always took all my wages, Troy. I had enough for groceries and what Aidan needed. Nothing for me. Not until … ”
I remember that she’d wore the same faded blouses for years. Remember too that Lora’s offers of castoff dresses never got took up.
“Honey, the hat’s just great. I know you ain’t a buckle bunny.”
She looks at me, perplexed for half a heartbeat, then she laughs, head back, crooked teeth shining in her wide mouth.
An hour later, the calves and ropers are rounded up and gone, and the clouds are rolling in. The first four chuckwagons line up on the track. The Wild Lilies surge to their feet. I follow them as they rush down to the rail and hang over its edge. They whoop and holler some more, cheering their driver and his four-horse hitch, three tons of horseflesh, sixteen hooves, all controlled with leather reins thinner’n my pinky. On the track, one outrider holds the lead horses’ bridles while the other heaves the camp-stove into the back of the rig. His partner turns loose the lead horses, then they both vault into their own saddles and the rig is in high gallop, carving a figure eight round the barrels, thundering around the track. A half-mile of hell, it’s been called, a dozen guys, on rigs and in the saddle. Takes a certain kinda crazy that reminds me of my days on the bulls.
The horses’ nostrils up close are red and wide, the track churned into chaos under their tearing hooves. They sound like the trains we used to hear from our house in Drumheller. They sound like fists on flesh. I look around, my mouth dry, looking for Clarisse, and recall arriving in the yard of Gavin and Clarisse’s house two years ago as a train rumbled up the track. My brother strolled past me and out the gate, threading his belt into the loops on his jeans. I got inside in double time and found her on the kitchen floor. When she saw me, she pulled herself into a sitting position, her hand clutching her nose, blood seeping between her fingers. “I hate the sound of those trains,” she said, her voice muffled. “Don’t, Troy. I can do it.” She stood up, shook off my help, her back straight as she walked to the bathroom.
“Clarisse,” I say, hardly aware I’ve climbed the hill to stand in front of her where she sits alone. “Are you all right? I hate to see — ”
She smiles at me, her face in bloom. “Of course I’m all right. Still looking out for me after all these years!”
That resets my stopwatch. I turn away and take my seat without saying nothing else. Looking out for her. Hell, even the flirting’s become so second nature that I guess I’d expected a little sugar.
Aidan noiselessly slides past me onto the bench beside her, slips his hand in hers as if he was a kid again, his eyes flicking from his mother to me and back to her. Minutes crawl by without anyone saying a word. I’m relieved when the heat’s times are announced and the Wild Lilies down at the rail erupt, jangling their bracelets and yowling like cats in heat. Linda prances up to us and plants a kiss on Aidan’s cheek. Even his ears turn bright red.
“Did you win?” Clarisse asks, on her feet and clapping.
“We had the fastest time in our heat. The rest of the heats have yet to run, but points accumulate all season.” Linda plunks herself down and pats the bench beside Clarisse. “It’ll be awhile before supper. So tell me all about what you’re doing with yourself.”
Their voices are drowned out as more horses thunder around the track. The Lilies stay put, their horses done for the day. Another hour passes. I watch the beer cooler empty. I’m still thi
nking on Clarisse’s words when she tugs at my shirtsleeve.
“Linda knows a good dentist,” she half-shouts, raising her voice over the high-pitched laughter of the Lilies. “He’s done stuff for some of her people, takes payment over time, she says. Good rates.”
“Yeah?” I almost yell in her ear. “That’s really great, Clarisse.” It’ll be another step toward repairing the marks of Gavin’s temper. More proof she don’t need my arm to catch her. I know I should be glad, but somehow I’m not.
The noise level climbs. By nine, as the final heat concludes, the clouds let loose.
“Ladies! Let’s beat the rain and the supper crowds!” Linda abandons her beer on the bench and hustles her girls up the hill. Aidan eyeballs the can and tries to snag it without Clarisse noticing.
“You hungry, Aidan?” I grab his arm, knock the can over and out of reach, tow him up the grassy slope, my other arm around Clarisse to protect her from the rain.
The banners draped on the tent’s central peak are whipping as the breeze picks up. A band is tuning onstage under the spotlights, sounding tinny. When the fiddler breaks into the opening bars of “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” the floor fills. The three of us weave through the swarm of bodies, collect potato salad and smokies on buns, lean against the metal doorjamb to watch. The Lilies are celebrating their rig’s first-place standing after the evening’s heats, a gaggle clustered across the dance floor. Even from here I can hear ’em cracking blue jokes about their driver.
A grey-haired couple in dancing duds two-steps past, light-footed as ropers in their best boots. She smiles like a girl when her eyes meet mine. Aidan points at a young guy in an old-timey wide-brimmed hat, twirling his date, catching and tossing her like the roping is still going on. “Those old dudes are better than that hotshot,” he says.
“They’ve been dancing together a long time, I bet,” I say lightly. As if time solves everything.
Across the marquee, a blonde in boots and a thigh-high skirt breaks free from the Lily patch and spots us. “One of Linda’s buckle bunnies,” I whisper. Clarisse pokes me in the ribs, her nails sharp. The blonde pushes through the pack until she stands, hands on hips, in front of us, then grabs Aidan by the arm without noticing his flinch.
“Come on, kid. I’ll teach you how to two-step.” She tugs him onto the crowded floor to the strains of “Someday Soon” just as the suns slides out of the clouds and sets. He stumbles beside her, then in the next step, he gets it, leaning into the rhythm, his arms relaxed. Clarisse, jammed beneath my arm, claps and whistles when Aidan, spinning by, grins at us, a blaze of teeth.
“He’s great!” she yells, and gives him a thumbs-up. We watch them turn and dip around the floor until the song ends, when Aidan half-bows to the blonde before he disappears into the crowd.
The band cuts into “Pancho and Lefty,” and I’m leaning down, about to ask Clarisse to dance, when a redhead stops beside us, her breath sweet with whisky. Do I know her face? One of Gavin’s many cast-offs, maybe. “You seen my daughter? Long hair? About this tall?”
Clarisse shakes her head. I nudge her, my face turned aside. “Where are the outriders? She should look there.”
The drunken mother leans in to listen. Her face slackens, then tenses. “She’s thirteen!” she hisses.
I get a good look at her. “Rose?” I say, recognizing her too late, from my days as a bouncer at the Drumheller Hotel. “You lookin’ for Judith?” Knowing the missing girl, a kid younger than Aidan, I realize what a blockhead I musta sounded. My apology is drowned by the storm’s arrival, the tent’s canvas walls flapping in the wind. I set Clarisse on a chair, shepherd Rose to the line-up for the ladies’ with a promise to find her lost girl, and hustle back help the guys shift tables away from the walls dripping rain. Yellow air, soil on the move, unstoppable and gritty, like Pop’s wasted years rolling east, lives blowing away.
The wind quits, the rain stopping as quick as it started. The clouds part to reveal a sickle moon, orange in the cooling air. Down the hillside, on the bleachers, I can see two figures, the small frame of a girl, a blonde braid dangling down her back, leaning against the taller one. Then I recognize the shape of the head next to her as Clarisse moves soundlessly to my side.
“Down there,” I say, and point, then kick myself as soon as the words leave my mouth. A boy’s first moments with a girl are fragile, best kept private, away from his mother’s eyes. Clarisse’s skinny hand tenses on my forearm.
I turn to her. “He’s a good kid, Clarisse. So’s that little girl, I’ve known her mom for years. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
“This storm, the noise, it’s unnerving. Reminds me of Gavin, and I start worrying that he’s somehow rubbed off on Aidan.”
“What? Aidan don’t have a mean bone. He never has. He’s had you all these years. That counts for lots.”
“Just check. Please, Troy. I’d go down there myself, but I don’t want to embarrass him.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell him it’s time to push off.” I set off, still nimble despite my limp. The kids don’t hear me, are giggling when I reach them. I change my footing, bring my boots down like I mean business. Aidan turns around, pulls away from the girl.
“Uncle Troy!”
“Hey, Aidan.”
“Hey. Mom okay?”
“She needs you.” I nod to the girl. “You’re Judith, right? I know your mom. She’s lookin’ for ya.”
“She’s drunk,” the girl sneers, twisting her braid between her fingers. “She’s always drunk.”
“She’s sad, girlie. Something happened to break her joy. You gotta remember she loves you.”
The girl’s face narrows and tightens. “Yeah? And who are you? Who made you the big guardian?”
“I guess I did that myself. Go find your mom, honey. It’s almost ten o’clock and I need to talk to Aidan here.”
She makes an ugly face at me, and kicks at the wet grass. “What if Aidan doesn’t want me to go?”
“I think Aidan might call you next week. Right, Aidan?” His puzzled look, then his nod and wide-ass grin a couple seconds later. “I know your mom,” I remind her, “I’ll see he gets your number.”
She trails slowly up the hill. “Oh, all right. Bye, Aidan.”
“Bye.”
“Don’t forget,” she says over her shoulder, directed at both of us.
I wait until Aidan turns to face me. “Your mom’s joy is busted too, Aidan. She needs your help to put things back together.” I watch, worrying. Wondering if he’ll ape the girl he just met, and diss his mother. I can see the thought flicker in his eyes.
He angles away, faces up the slope. “You’re not my dad.”
“No, I’m not.” I’m sorry Aidan has mentioned Gavin. What can I say that Aidan hasn’t already learned the hard way? I know if I have to, I’ll play my brother, the soiled and sticky trump card in my tattered deck of tricks. Somehow this small moment beneath the orange moon has become something larger, and I wonder if Aidan understands what’s going down. He stares pokerfaced at me, his father’s face ghosting over his features, and I see exactly how my nephew will look as a man.
“So you can’t tell me what to do.”
I give him a little room, follow when he heads up the hill, my boot heels muffled on the wet grass.
“You like my mom,” he mutters. I can barely hear him.
“Yep. I do.”
“I mean, you like her.”
For the second time this evening, I’m pole-axed. I’ve put my feeling for Clarisse behind me. What did Aidan see, if I put it behind me?
“You’re wrong, Uncle Troy. Mom’s not broken.” His voice is sharp. “She doesn’t need you. She needs me.”
My boots slip on the grass. Beneath my belt, my rebellious guts seethe.
“What do you do for fun now?” Aidan asks. “Do you miss the bulls? Riding them, I mean?” He sounds like a guitar string about to break.
I stop on the hillside. Recall Linda, standing down the doper o
n the riverbank. Clarisse, buying a pink cowboy hat and finding a new home. And now Aidan, two-stepping like a man. “Nah. Not anymore,” I finally say. “There’s lots of thrills, most of ’em way safer now that I’m an old dude. Compared to you young bucks, I mean. We’ll talk about it more, yeah? I’ll come get you from school after work next week, take you out for coffee. Just you and me, eh? We’ve got lots to talk about.” In my head, I see Gavin, stepping into the hall, leaving me safe in the closet. Aidan should know that side of his dad too.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice shaky.
By the time Aidan and I reach the truck, we’re both calm, and Clarisse has the AC and “High Lonesome Sound” cranked up for the drive home in the darkness.
Other Mothers’ Sons
THE BOY WAS SITTING AT THE lip of the TransCanada Highway, thumb out, the elephant-hide hills east of Kamloops behind him. He held a hand-lettered sign. Please. The tarmac wavered in the heat. Joanna started to brake as she read the single word, then searched for a turnaround point, but backtracking on the highway is never simple. By the time she’d found a safe place to carve her first U-turn, then another a good five miles back the way she’d come, ten minutes had elapsed before she pulled her car to a stop in the shale at the young man’s feet.
She lowered the passenger window, doors still locked, and took a careful look. The kid’s backpack was Army surplus, his work boots and khaki shorts coated with dust and smudged with grit. His face was clean. “Hop in,” she said, and hit the unlock button. He nodded at her, his hands busy with door handle and seat belt clasp, but his eyes said thanks from beneath the bandana wrapped around his forehead, biker style. A few miles later, she heard him sigh and sensed his body relaxing into the seat.
There was no need to ask where he was headed. East. No other roads. No other direction. No map needed. She was grateful to not think, not feel, to simply react to the needs of the highway, her own body slackening in response to the regular breathing next to her. That was familiar too, and she trusted her reaction. She slid “Motherland” into the slot, turned it down low and let the road unwind, the gypsy-like violins and mandolin a counter-point to the steep terrain.
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