by Ron Thompson
“Huh. . . I see the problem. There’d have to be an ounce of goodness in you to do it.”
“And he didn’t have it. Not like Sydney Carton.”
“Here’s to Syd.”
“To Syd.”
The two of us could go on like that for hours, fuelled by Smirnoff’s, informed by Classics Illustrated.
* * *
Now it was two o’clock, and I was still wide awake. The wind had died. There were no cars in the street. I heard someone in the hall. Dad. He was often sleepless at night. Mom said it was the war, what he had seen. I turned onto my side, away from Genny. In her sleep she stirred and moved to nestle closer.
That fall we went into Grade Eleven, and Clinton joined the Lakers. Mr Hardcastle also joined the team to coach the quarterbacks and receivers. Clinton had benefitted from their worktogether in the off-season, and within days it was obvious that he was the best quarterback and would be our starter, even though he was a rookie. I tried out for receiver, the position I was strongest at, but the Hardass cut me quickly. I would not even get to practice as a backup. “I don’t think he gets you,” Clinton said in consolation. “He likes to read people. Understand what makes them tick, you know?” On defense, I had a shot at starting safety, and I would have a regular role on the return team, but I knew I had peaked in the game. I was Clinton’s size, and I had speed, but I would never have the weight to be truly effective on defense. I would always have to fight for playing time.
Not Clinton. His size worked to his advantage. He was a scrambler who could escape when the pocket collapsed, who could improvise and make a gain on a broken play. Deep down I knew he should have been on the team the year before, not me. Still, he was that much better for the coaching he’d received from Mr Hardcastle.
I got in on offense once that season. One of the regular receivers was out with an injury, one of the backups got banged up on a play, and Coach Blucher tagged me to go in. But I hadn’t practiced as a receiver and didn’t know all the patterns. Those I ran were intended to draw the linebackers away from the real play. On my fourth play the Martyrs came with a blitz, the pocket around Clinton never even formed, and he fell back, somehow dodged the rush, and rolled towards the far sideline. It was clear to me he wasn’t going to get a pass away, so I stopped fifteen yards up-field on the far side and watched, waiting for him to slide. But he wouldn’t slide, he refused to go down, he kept looking for a receiver until he was caught and brought down with a clatter of pads and a terrible thud. I ran to him but he was already up. “Where’d that truck come from?” he said to me. He was limping slightly. The loss put us in a punt situation so we ran off for the kick team. Coach Blucher slapped us on our backs as we came off. “Okay fellas, we’ll get it back. Don’t worry about it.” But the Hardass pulled me aside and slapped me on the helmet. “Buttcrack! Why are you standing around out there? When your quarterback gets in trouble you come back to him. You play wide, you always come back for your quarterback! You hear?”
“Yes, Coach.”
He gave me another tap on the helmet and turned to Clinton, who was testing his knee. “You okay, Weasel?”
“I’m okay, yeah. I’m okay.”
For the rest of the game I made sure to come back to Clinton, but the ball never came my way.
* * *
Three o’clock. Still no closer to sleep. The memories were flowing now.
That winter Reggie Lafleur asked Tammy Sheptytski out. They went out a few times and then they didn’t. Clinton continued working at Hardcastle Accounting, and I worked Thursday nights and Saturdays at the tackle shop, so we had less time to hang out. And Clinton’s mother continued to see Walt. Clinton never said it outright, but I could tell he didn’t like his mom’s boyfriend.
I had always felt my otherness; and I had found a kindred spirit in Clinton. Together we chomped at the limitations of life in puny Poplar Lake. We were angry at the world, angry at weknew-not-what. His alienation had always manifested as sardonic humour and detachment, but that winter he was in a black mood, one that sometimes welled up and overflowed into physical violence. Once, when I came from behind to beat him at handball, he shouted “FUCK!” and wacked the concrete wall with the meaty part of his fist. The blow made a sickening thwack and he hopped around in pain before putting on a poker face like nothing had happened and it hadn’t hurt. Another time, we were playing bitch slap, and I landed a truly satisfying hit to tie the score at three, and he knocked me down with his comeback. He feinted with his left, which got me moving to his right, straight into it. It was a legal, open-handed hit, and it made the right sound, but he round-housed me with it. My head snapped back, I lost my balance and landed on my butt. I sat up, felt my jaw, and looked at him—and what I saw in his eyes scared me. It was there like a glowing spark and then it faded and disappeared, and he was back. He put on a grin and offered me a hand up. “That’ll teach yuh,” he said, and I replied, “Asshole,” and we both had a shot and went upstairs.
Talk of music or superheroes did not brighten him like it had. Sometimes I would catch him staring at me, his eyes cold and resentful, and I wondered what I had done—or if he even saw me. When he drank he grew erratic and volatile. Before, we had both followed the same trajectory: we got giddy and energetic, then mellow and philosophical. Now he often bypassed mellow and went to sombre. And when we went to the Grizzly Bar, by ourselves or with the Lakers, or sometimes with his Ice Dog friends, he’d scowl at the surrounding tables. I scowled too but that was to look older. Older people always scowled. But his scowl was a challenge. “Hey, chill out,” I’d say, but he would glower at me until I found a way to lighten things up. Sometimes I just couldn’t. He was beyond reach.
That spring there was a disturbance at his house that brought the police in the middle of the night. Clinton never said anything about what happened, but I overheard one of the church ladies telling my mother about it over coffee in our kitchen. Much as Edie liked Claire Sturgis and considered her a friend, she did not dissuade the church lady from speaking; nor did she offer any comment other than “Oh dear,” and “Poor Claire.” But she listened, as people in a small town will; and I eavesdropped from the other room, as their children always do. Claire’s “fella,” her “gentleman friend,” had become abusive. Apparently he had a problem with drink—he had been seen around town a few times, sheets to the wind. He also had a ken for the ladies but (here, the church lady sniffed) Claire seemed unaware that she had company. Well, he showed up late one night, the worse for wear, and Claire seemed just fine with that. Apparently she entertained him in the state he was in . . . but something happened. Voices rose to shouts. He was hurting Claire, and the boy came to his mother’s aid. There was a fight. The boy held off the man while his mother called the Mounties. Apparently Claire Sturgis had bruises, the lady told Mom, but her fella was beaten up pretty good. It was the boy who did it.
“What a brave young man,” Mom told the church lady. There were no charges, either way, said the church lady. No one wanted to press a complaint.
Clinton’s knuckles were scraped raw after the incident. He told me he’d been moving furniture at Hardcastle’s. He had never liked Walt. There had been tension between them from the beginning. The relationship had obviously been eating him for months.
CHAPTER 19
I felt ragged in the morning but I got up with Genny to run.
“You were awake again,” she said as we were stretching. The grass was wet. It had rained just before dawn.
“Yeah, for a while. Dad has trouble sleeping sometimes. Maybe I’m getting like him.” She observed me silently.
“You’re not wearing your new under-duds.” She laughed. “It’s too warm for them.”
It was our last day in Poplar Lake, and at breakfast I asked her if she’d like to go for one final walk around town.
“Actually . . .” she said, looking towards my mother, “I was wonde
ring if Edie would show me the family photos. Of when you were all little.”
Mom looked surprised but agreed. After we cleared breakfast and did the dishes I sat with them as she went briskly through the Couple Years—the childhood shots of Edie and Stan on their respective family farms, Dad playing baseball, Dad in army uniform: wedge cap, battledress, hair like Jimmy Stewart. There was a single photo, creased and dog-eared, of him with the crew of his Sherman tank, everyone laughing and jaunty in berets, long lost and forever young. There were photos of Edie with her landlady, Edie with friends, Edie during her salad days as a young sales dynamo. “Oh my goodness, Edie, you were a dish!” Genny said, peering closely at a black and white snap.
Mom turned the page, smiling tightly.
“She was the whole darn meal!” Dad said from the doorway, on his way out to the garden.
“Oh Stan.” Mom blushed and tapped a picture. “That’s Andrew at one week.”
Now we were into pictures of the growing family. There were Dad and Mom in fifties clothes, in sixties clothes, in seventies clothes; and their boys in t-shirts, and short and long pants, and me always in hand-me-downs.
When, I wondered, did I graduate to new clothes? The photos were not in perfect chronological order. One baby, two, one again. A Christmas photo of young Edie with two toddlers in front of the tree. Her hand rests on her swollen stomach. She smiles at the camera. Other photos capture the chaos around the tree, wrapping paper, toys haphazardly stacked or abandoned, Dad grinning. Then there are three children, two tykes and a baby. More Christmases, birthdays, Halloweens, vacations. Edie always seemed to be expecting. Andrew inched taller, Simon stretched from squat and round to string-bean skinny. There was little Victor balancing precariously on his hind legs. There with the flip of a page were the children growing, theperceptible signs of age on their parents’ faces.
Dad came back inside with a bowl of raspberries and saw the two women bent over the album and me sitting to the side, fidgety. “Jake, you want to come to the hardware store?”
“Sure!”
“You’re going to miss the You section,” Genny told me.
“That’s okay. I was there on the first go-round.”
“But you were so cute!” She said cute in the babyish voice in which adults speak to children. As we went out the door I heard a page flip over and Genny say, “It looks like you’re expecting again in this one.”
* * *
Dad and I rode in his Bronco, listening to the CBC news on the hour. Saddam Hussein had staged a photo-op with western hostages. The Afghan civil war was raging. And there had been another necklacing in Soweto.
“Your mother worries,” Dad said, turning down the radio. “You’ll need to keep clear of trouble.”
“We won’t be anywhere near that stuff.”
“She jumps to the worst scenario. Mothers will always do that.”
“Botswana’s very peaceful. Really.”
“There was a big cross-border raid there a few years ago. In ‘eighty-five. There were a lot of casualties, right in the capital. And again, two years ago.”
He was well informed. He must have done some research at the library.
“Things are changing there now.”
He did not reply. We stopped at a level crossing for a passing freight.
“Is it just me,” I said, “or are there more trains here lately?”
“Probably the same as always.” The news ended. The weather report called for rain. Dad’s eyes followed the passing boxcars. “Is there something on your mind, son?”
“No. Why?”
The caboose passed and he glanced my way before putting the truck in gear. “You seem a bit distracted.”
“Do you think there’s some tension between Mom and Genny?”
“She’s a good woman.”
“Yes, she is!” I affirmed, although I wasn’t sure to whom he was referring.
“When the war ended and I came home, I was at a loss about what I’d do.”
I thought he was going to keep talking, but he said nothing. He was driving slowly now, both hands on the wheel at ten and two o’clock. We were leading a line of cars that had been backed up by the train. Now they were backed up behind Dad.
“Actually,” I admitted, “I’m not sure what I’m going to do, myself.”
“You fool!” Dad thundered. I jumped in my seat, but he was addressing a greaser in a muscle car who’d just cut him off on a lane change. He wasn’t one for strong language normally, and he glanced at me apologetically. “Sorry about that, Jake. Listen, no one’s sure what they’re doing. You just do your level best. That’s what I’ve learned.”
We drove in silence.
“I don’t know, Dad. Sometimes I think I should be worried about—you know, my career.” The word tasted bitter as I said it. “I’m going off-track for a while, going to Africa with Genny. It takes me off the conventional career path. And honestly, I’ll be kind of dead weight over there. I worry about, you know, being too young. I mean not ready for, uhm. To be . . . with someone.”
“Does Genny see it that way?”
I glanced at him. He was intent on driving. I glanced in the side mirror. The line behind us was thinning out as drivers changed lanes to get around him.
“In life,” Dad said, “you just have to do the right thing. What you think is right. What you know. When you realize that—when you decide that, it makes things real easy.”
I nodded as though I understood, then realized I didn’t. Perhaps we were characters in a George Lucas film. Talking in puzzles, was he.
“But what’s the right thing?”
“You know what it is, Jake . . .” He let a silence fall as I considered the right thing. “Make room!” he said forcefully. “Darn it, make room!” He was looking now in his rear view mirror. A van was on his bumper.
He frowned and drove for a moment in silence, glancing from mirror to road ahead then back to mirror. “Just look at your mother.”
“Pardon?”
“Look what she’s done.”
“When? What?”
“Be sure to write her regular.”
“I will—”
“And no foolish risks.”
“No, but—”
“There’s something I want you to think about real hard. Some of us need an anchor.”
“Pardon?”
“An anchor. Your mother’s mine.”
He shook his head sadly at the guy in the van, who extended his middle finger to us as he passed.
An hour later we came into the kitchen to find Genny and Mom still at the table, huddled closer than they had been when we left. The album was closed. I got the impression it had been closed suddenly, at the sound of our return. They looked at me mutely, Mom’s eyes watery and infinitely deep, Genny’s too.
CHAPTER 20
The afternoon was hot and muggy. Rain was on the way, and an oppressive heat wore heavily on all of us. Mom and Dad both felt it; they decided to take a nap right after lunch. Genny and I talked about going for a swim. “Digest your lunch first,” Mom suggested. “We’ll take you when we get up.” “That sounds perfect,” Genny said. “We’ll read a while.” After several nights of insomnia I felt like catching some shuteye myself, and to send me on my way I settled in with the book Dad had bought at the library, that discarded tome by the forgotten Englishman.
“Sit with me,” Genny said, patting the place next to her on the chesterfield. As soon as I did she produced my high schoolyearbooks from nowhere.
“Seriously?”
“Come on, let’s do it. We only have today.” I did colour commentary as she flipped through the Grade Eleven volume. She looked at pictures and asked questions, and I answered them, thinking she seemed more than idly curious, like she was looking for something, a key or a clue to whom I was or would be
come. She was getting close, and I did not want her to find it. So I told her nothing about drinking or playing bitch slap or handball with Clinton, or sneaking into the Grizzly Bar, or arguing about bands or graphic novels; or about Clinton’s black moods and sudden rages. I said nothing about his mother Claire or her errant friend Walt, whom I sometimes still saw in the neighbourhood—him, or his car parked nearby; or about Clinton’s increasingly protective attitude towards his mother, one that seemed dangerously steeped in jealousy.
Instead we chuckled at haircuts and fashions, and I told her about teachers both odd and dedicated. I told her about track and field, and fell back on stories of football, which I knew wouldbore her so much she would grow impatient and flip to anothersection. She studied the few grainy black and whites she found with me in them. Her eyes passed over Reggie Lafleur’s photo, over Clinton’s, before inexorably finding Tammy’s. After weturned the last page we agreed that Grade Eleven had not been a signature year in either of our lives, just one we’d passed through on the way to another. “And so on to the finale,” Genny said,closing the book and opening Grade Twelve.
I felt stab of pain in my belly, a cold recognition that I did not want to deal with this. We had less than a day left—we were leaving in the morning—and I might still divert her from what she was closing in on, what she seemed to be seeking: the truth about me and what I was.
So I took the yearbook from her and closed it and said we would look at it later, that I was tired and needed a nap. I kissed her lips and touched her breast and left the room with the yearbook tucked beneath my arm.
* * *
Upstairs, I could not sleep.
Tomorrow we would leave Poplar Lake and my past behind. I would follow Genny to Africa. I would make room for her. At least I would try. I would find out if I was capable of it.
Perhaps in Africa I would finally come to know myself, to understand who I was. In Africa I would live in the present, define and commit myself in the here-and-now. I would striveto do the right thing and not be blind to all that whizzed around me. At least I would try; and the distant years of my childhood, my isolation, my sense of incompleteness, of being apart, my failures . . . none of that would matter to the person I could become, with Genny as my anchor.
