Sufferance

by Thomas King

  “Jerry!”

  Mayor Bob pushes through the assembly with all the grace of a snowplow.

  “Eat up,” he says. “Don’t want to be taking any of this home.”

  I keep the plate between myself and the mayor and imagine that I’m someplace else. A zoo, perhaps. Or an animal fair.

  “You remember the Cradle River Estates project?”

  Now the song is in my head.

  Loomis guides me through the crowd to the scale model. Cradle River Estates is looking somewhat the worse for wear. The shopping centre is tilting to one side and several of the street-name stickers have begun to lift.

  I went to the animal fair. The birds and the beasts were there.

  “We just got these in.” Mayor Bob hands me a brochure, “Cradle River Estates. Your Future Now.” It’s a full-colour artistic rendering of what the development will look like when it’s finished.

  The big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair.

  “Natural materials and earth tones,” says the big baboon. “Man and the land in harmony with each other.”

  The brochures stink of ink.

  “Best of all, the brochures didn’t cost taxpayers a cent.” The mayor lowers his voice, as though he’s sharing a secret. “Foundation came along and picked up the costs. What do you think about that?”

  I don’t know why I thought coming to Mayor Bob’s party was a good idea.

  “Couple of the folks are here tonight,” says Loomis. “You should meet them.”

  Clearly, I was wrong. I would have been better off on a bench.

  “Wonderful party, mayor.”

  Ash Locken and Oliver Flood materialize out of the crowd. Locken is looking splendid in a midnight-blue cocktail dress with a sequined bodice. Flood is in a dark wool suit that reminds me of coffins.

  “And here they are,” says Mayor Bob.

  “Here we are,” says Ash.

  Flood is trying not to laugh.

  “This is Jeremiah Camp,” says the mayor, “one of our prominent citizens.”

  It’s too much for Flood, and he has to turn away.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Camp,” says Locken. “I hope you like the brochure.”

  “He loves it,” says the mayor. “Everybody loves it.”

  Flood takes my plate. Locken takes my arm.

  “Perhaps Mr. Camp could show me the veranda. I understand it’s quite the view in the moonlight.”

  Locken doesn’t wait for an answer. She leaves the mayor to Flood and steers me to the French doors.

  “You would think that by now, I’d be used to this kind of thing,” she says, as we clear the room and step into the night. “But I’m not.”

  The moon isn’t up yet. No light. No view.

  “The mayor tells me you can see the eighteenth green from here. I guess I’ll just have to take his word for it.”

  There are tables on the veranda. With umbrellas that have been shut for the evening.

  “I was hoping that you’d come.”

  There are lounge chairs as well.

  “I imagine you’re wondering what we’re doing here.” Locken waits for a moment. “The brochure? The Ankh Foundation?”

  Locken leaves my side and walks to the edge of the veranda.

  “No point in wasting a perfectly good corporation, and Oliver thought you might need an object lesson.”

  Locken extends her hands. One holds air. The other holds a brochure.

  “Heaven,” she says. “Or Hell.”

  Now that my eyes have adjusted, I can just make out the green with its little flag.

  “I never understood golf.” Locken smiles. “My father, on the other hand, loved it, wanted desperately to be a member at Augusta. But the membership there is limited to around three hundred individuals, and the only time there’s an opening is when someone dies.”

  Locken stands in the dark, her arms wrapped around herself to ward off the chill.

  “Then you have to be asked to join. You can’t just apply. And he was never asked.”

  I walk to where Locken is waiting, take my jacket off, and put it over her bare shoulders.

  “My hero.”

  Inside, Maribelle Wegman is making a toast to Mayor Bob and his re-election, against a chant of “Bob’s the One,” and Mayor Bob follows it with a toast to the Cradle River Estates project and Gleaming’s new prosperity.

  “Bernard Dassault is dead.”

  I wait.

  “In Paris. An apparent stroke.”

  Oliver Flood appears in the doorway, nods, and steps back inside. Locken slips my jacket off and hands it to me.

  “The forecast,” she says, and starts back into the clubhouse. “When you have the time. We don’t want the mayor’s master plan to become a reality.”

  Inside, the trio is playing “Chances Are,” and several couples are dancing. I stand by the windows and wait for the moon to come up.

  So I can find my way home and not get lost.

  27

  The next morning, everyone is in the kitchen. Emma has cooked pancakes, and there are still some left.

  “Pop-Up!”

  Ada waves a fork at me. “Emma said you were going to walk Lala to school.”

  “That’s right, Nooko,” says Lala. “Pop-Up always walks me to school.”

  I have my quinoa in the refrigerator, but it will keep.

  “You wouldn’t believe what Ada and me saw on television last night,” says Nutty.

  “There’s this woman,” says Ada, “and a bunch of guys.”

  “And she gets a date with each one,” says Nutty.

  “I like dates,” says Lala.

  “Not that kind of date, Chipmunk,” says Ada.

  “And after she goes out with each of them,” says Nutty, “she has to choose one to marry.”

  “Can we get some dates?” says Lala.

  The pancakes are excellent. I’m sorry that there aren’t more.

  “I don’t think it will last,” says Nutty. “Those guys are all stuck on themselves.”

  “Sure,” says Ada. “All they got in common is the sex.”

  “I know what sex is,” says Lala.

  Ada and Nutty stop laughing and try to look serious.

  “Isn’t it time for you to go to school?” says Ada.

  “Linda says her big brother has a magazine full of sex.” Lala jumps off her chair and grabs her lunch. “She says if me and Helen give her a loonie, she’ll let us see the sex.”

  Ada gives Emma a hard look. “You need to talk to your daughter.”

  Emma puts the pan in the sink. “Leave it alone, Mum.”

  Ada shrugs. “You don’t want her making mistakes.”

  Lala slips into her jacket. “If I had a loonie, I’d buy dates.”

  LALA IS WORKING her phone as soon as we get out the door. She takes pictures of the graveyard, of the squirrels, of the clouds in the sky. She takes a number of pictures of me.

  “Stop right there,” she yells. “Don’t move. Hold your arms out. Lift your foot up as though you’re really walking. Smile.”

  She takes a picture of Mrs. Takahashi and Koala.

  “Aren’t you a little young for a cellphone?” says Takahashi.

  “I can do videos, too,” says Lala.

  Takahashi smiles at me. “Your Mr. Flood was very kind,” she says. “He told me how much you wanted Keizo’s binoculars.”

  I don’t try to explain Oliver Flood to Mrs. Takahashi.

  “I gave him a good price.” Takahashi shakes the leash and Koala hops to her feet. “Maybe you will be able to see what Keizo saw.”

  THE CROWS FOLLOW US along the river path, and Lala takes pictures of them as they dance from tree to tree.

  “Maybe I’ll make a movie,” she says, “about crows.”

  Before the earthquake changed the course of the Cradle River and drained the right channel, there was a bridge that joined the reserve and the town. After the river went dry, the bridge fel
l into disrepair, and now, all that remains of the structure are the skeletal pilings, sticking out of the ground like broken teeth.

  When we get to the old riverbed, Lala runs down and stands between the pilings, so I can take her picture with the phone.

  The crows settle in a tree close to the bank and wait. Black holes cut into the sky.

  “Mum-Mum says I have to give you my phone.” Lala runs up the far bank, and then she runs back down. “But that’s not fair, ’cause Linda gets to keep hers.”

  I try to imagine a classroom filled with cellphone-wielding children.

  “You should take a bunch of pictures while I’m in school,” says Lala. “That way, I can see what you do all day.”

  FLORENCE SEES ME as soon as I come into the Piggy. She throws up her arms in mock horror.

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  I think, Monuments of Injured Innocence. But I keep my mouth shut, set the brownie on the counter.

  “I voted against it,” says Florence. “But Ada don’t have enough room at her trailer for the both of them, and there’s the problem of the mould.”

  Emma comes out of the kitchen. I take Lala’s phone out of my pocket and hand it to her.

  Emma shakes her head. “I can’t believe she gave it up. The girl sleeps with the thing.”

  “Whereas you have lots of room.” Florence dumps beans into the grinder. “And then that friend of yours came along, and that pretty much did it.”

  “But you didn’t have to pay my law society dues as well,” says Emma. “You’ve done so much already.”

  Florence lifts the lever. I watch the cup start to fill.

  “Thank you.” Emma wipes her hands on the apron. “I’ll reimburse you as soon as I can.”

  “Emma’s going to open her own business right here in Gleaming.” Florence froths the milk, angling the pitcher to one side. “Cradle River Legal. Pretty good name, eh?”

  Florence sets the macchiato in front of me, along with the tarot deck. “Caffeine for the party animal.”

  The macchiato is hot and bitter. The brownie helps to soften the taste.

  “Heard you were at the mayor’s big party last night.” Emma pulls up a stool and sits. “Cradle River Estates? You got to love the arrogance.”

  I take a second sip, another bite of brownie.

  “He wants to throw us out and use our name for his subdivision?” Emma holds up a brochure and tears it in half. “Man can build all the models he wants. Print enough of these things to reach the moon. And Cradle River will still be treaty land.”

  “Emma gets done with him,” says Florence, “old Bob won’t know what hit him.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Emma looks to Florence for support. “I’m going to need temporary office space. Just until I can find something more permanent.”

  “Ada says there’s an extra room at the end of the school,” says Florence. “Has an outside door.”

  “I’ll split my day,” says Emma. “Work here during the morning and early afternoons. Do the legal stuff in the evening. Just till I get established.”

  I nurse my coffee while Florence tells me the news. Murder, mayhem, scandal, another school shooting, this time in Ohio. Emma goes back to the kitchen to check on the soup.

  “Figure as soon as she gets the business up and running, I’ll go back to normal.” Florence wipes down the counter. “Running a real restaurant with real customers is too much work. Had my fill of that when Reggie was alive. And if I stay open much longer, Mayor Bob is going to want me to buy a business licence.”

  There’s a sign on the wall that says “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone.”

  “Worse, he might drop in and order a latte.” Florence frowns at the thought. “No one wants to see that.”

  I shuffle the tarot and cut the cards. Some guy hanging upside down, one leg crossed over the over.

  “Major Arcana,” says Florence. “The Hanged Man. Learning to see in a new way. Necessity to break old habits. Brink of an awakening.”

  The guy’s arms are outstretched and there are nails driven into the palms of his hands.

  “Card looks worse than it is.”

  So now the school is home to a mother and her child, two older women, and a law office. As well as a practice room for the drum team. The next thing I know, the crows will be on the front porch, looking to move in.

  “Almost forgot,” says Florence. “Wes Stanford got himself arrested. Along with his wife and a bunch of the Neighbours.”

  There’s a ring of froth around the inside of the cup. I scrape at it with my spoon, but it’s dry and crusty.

  “They were in the plaza, minding their own business,” says Florence. “Going to be Emma’s first big case.”

  I wet my finger and poke at the bits of brownie left on the counter.

  “Another one of the mayor’s public safety initiatives.” Florence wets a towel. “You got to have a fixed address or you’re a vagrant.”

  Florence takes my cup. Wipes down the counter.

  “Course, having a fixed address don’t mean you got a home,” she says. “Having a fixed address don’t mean you got people who care for you.”

  I think about having a second macchiato, but then I remember that the brownie is all gone, and now there’s nothing left to cut the bitter taste.

  28

  Nutty is waiting for me in the graveyard. Someone has brought out two chairs from the school. Nutty is sitting on one. Slick is perched on the back of the other.

  “I’d rather sit on the ground,” she says, “but it’s pretty hard getting down, and it’s real hard getting up.”

  Slick plumps his feathers, rocks back and forth.

  “He’s waiting for a peanut.”

  Slick hops across the top of the chair in one direction, and then he hops back in the other.

  “But I don’t have one.” Nutty slumps in the chair like a sack of laundry. She’s pale, and her eyes are cloudy. “So he’ll have to settle for company and conversation.”

  Slick stretches his wings and begins clucking to himself.

  “Had Roman bring the chairs out,” says Nutty. “A little sun is good medicine.”

  I sit on the ground, settle in against one of the crosses.

  “Ada wants me in bed. She catches me out here, she’ll have a fit.”

  It hasn’t rained, but the earth feels moist and soft.

  “There was a time when there was a bridge over the river. Before the big quake. Before that bad winter.” Nutty shifts in the chair. “Now the river and the bridge are gone. Mayor and the town get their way, we’ll be gone, too.”

  Nutty’s right about the sun. I can feel my body begin to relax, my eyes begin to droop.

  “Pretty strange being back in the school, I can tell you that.” Nutty sticks her cane in the ground and pushes up. “Pretty strange.”

  The wind comes out of nowhere and rattles the branches of the trees. Slick’s head snaps up. He crouches down and then explodes into the air, cawing as he goes. I watch the crow as he gains altitude and disappears over the river.

  “Must have heard something he don’t like.”

  I help Nutty back to the school. She moves slowly, using the cane to pick her way through the graveyard, but we get back to the room before Ada shows up. The television is on. The sound is turned off.

  “Ada likes to watch that Murder, She Wrote,” says Nutty. “Likes the idea of a woman detective. Even if that Mrs. Fletcher is White.”

  Flood has been extravagant. In addition to satellite service and a fifty-five-inch television, he’s arranged for Netflix and a Super Sports package.

  “Baseball and Murder, She Wrote on a big screen.” Nutty eases into the recliner, works the remote until the footrest comes up and catches her legs. “You may never get rid of Ada.”

  I go to the kitchen and rummage in the refrigerator. There’s orange juice and apples, a package of cheese and a bag of cookies. I put orange jui
ce in a glass and four of the cookies on a plate.

  Nutty is still in the chair. She has the chair remote in one hand and the television remote in the other.

  “There’s this button you can push,” she says. “So you can see what everyone is saying.”

  “It’s called closed caption.” Ada stands in the doorway with shopping bags in each hand. “And you can record programs so you don’t miss them, and so you can fast-forward through the commercials.”

  On the television, Mrs. Fletcher is explaining how she doesn’t want to get in the way of a police investigation.

  “Ada’s already recorded a couple dozen programs,” says Nutty.

  Ada sets the bags down. “Sure, but a lot of them are for Lala. Educational stuff. That girl is so smart. She already knows most of her times tables.”

  Nutty helps herself to a cookie. “I always had trouble with the eights.”

  “You’re not supposed to eat a lot of sugar,” says Ada. “You need protein to help with the blood.”

  “I like cookies.”

  Ada picks up the bags. “I got a bunch of vegetables. Broccoli, carrots, green beans. And some tomatoes.”

  “Thought you were going to get pizza.”

  “This stuff is healthier.”

  I stay with Nutty while Ada goes to the kitchen to put the groceries away. As soon as she’s gone, Nutty takes another cookie.

  “You know what the Catholics gave us to eat?” Nutty slips the cookie under her pillow. “Breakfast was grey mush. Sometimes we’d get a couple of pieces of stale bread with some jam. Most of the time, we had this soup for lunch. They’d boil up whatever they could get was cheap. Dinner was more bread and jam and fried potatoes.”

  Nutty closes her eyes and bows her head.

  “We were always hungry.”

  I can hear Ada rummaging in the refrigerator, hear her opening and closing the cupboard doors.

  “Hope you’re not eating any more of them cookies,” she shouts to us from the kitchen.

  Nutty nods. “It’s why Ada is fat and got diabetes.”

  I can smell onions cooking and some kind of meat. On the big screen, Mrs. Fletcher is pretending that she has no interest in a double homicide that involves one of her nieces. Along with the onions and the meat, I can smell fried potatoes. And suddenly I’m hungry.