Sufferance

by Thomas King

  This is how crows forecast, and for the most part, they’re better at it than humans. When they see trouble, they don’t ignore it and rationalize a happy ending. When they see an easy passage, they don’t speculate on the possible calamities that might be around the corner. If they see something they don’t recognize, they don’t pretend that they do.

  But then crows don’t understand human nature. They’re smart and they’re cautious, but they would never be able to comprehend our fancy for deceit, deception, and self-destruction.

  A murder of crows. Quite disingenuous. Considering the source.

  I read the forecast over one last time.

  31

  I’m waiting outside the school when Lala comes tripping out. She’s with two other girls, and they’re laughing as they come down the steps.

  “Pop-Up!” She rushes over. “Where’s Mum-Mum?”

  I give Lala her cellphone. Emma has sent her a text message.

  “Mum-Mum has to work late,” Lala announces, “so you have to take care of me.”

  The other two girls keep their distance. I wonder if one of them is the dreaded Linda.

  “This means you have to do everything I tell you to do.”

  I check the sky. No sign of rain.

  “The first thing we have to do is pull up more crosses.”

  It’s a short walk from the school to the plaza. Lala is all energy and motion. She skips and jumps, runs on ahead and runs back, talking all the time.

  “But before we do that, we have to get ice cream. Otherwise, we’ll be hungry.”

  Dino has fresh grapes and they look good. Dino takes Lala through the produce section, shows her the vegetables, tells her where they’re from.

  “The avocados are from California,” he says. “The cantaloupes are from Mexico.” Dino holds up a bag of dates. “These come in from Turkey.”

  I get the dates. Along with tomatoes and apples, a bunch of bananas, a sandwich ham, as well as two bags of cookies. I pick up another loaf of bread, eggs, and a block of butter.

  Dino gives Lala a tiny box of raisins.

  “Did you know that the ancient Nemeans gave raisins as prizes to the winners of sporting events?”

  “Like baseball?”

  “Sure,” says Dino, “like baseball.”

  I try to imagine Mike Trout hitting home runs or Mookie Betts shagging fly balls for a bag of dried grapes.

  “I’m going to save Pop-Up some raisins for when he has to lift the stones.”

  Dino looks at me, a sad smile on his face. “The things we do for our children.”

  I pick up some hot dogs, and Lala comes out of the freezer with a carton of ice cream. I’m surprised that it’s vanilla. I would have supposed that little girls would like something with colour, strawberry or chocolate or rocky road. Neapolitan would have been my guess.

  “Vanilla’s the best,” she tells me, “’cause you can put chocolate syrup on it.”

  So we get a can of chocolate syrup as well.

  “No harm in spoiling a child,” Dino tells me. “I spoil my grandkids all the time.”

  I don’t plan on stopping at the bakery, but Swannie sees us coming.

  “A bad day for the business.” She hands Lala a small bag. “Today, I make the lemon tarts too many.”

  “Look.” Lala holds the bag open so I can see. “Lemon goes with ice cream.”

  “D’accord,” says Swannie, “this is widely known.”

  “That’s a funny word,” says Lala.

  “D’accord,” says Swannie, “this is French.” Swannie fixes me with a glare. “This one will learn French, yes?”

  If we spend any more time in the plaza, Eddie Ott is going to rush out of the Bent Nail, offer Lala a beer, along with a pair of tickets to the next hockey game, and Maidie Matthews is going to give her a rake.

  “And you must get a dog. D’accord?”

  ALL THE WAY BACK to the school, a dog is all Lala talks about.

  “If we had a dog, Pancakes would have someone to play with when I’m at school.”

  If Pancakes didn’t rip the throat out of the puppy first.

  Lala starts spinning around. “And we could take the dog for walks.”

  And pick up dog poop in plastic sacks.

  “If we had a dog, Pancakes wouldn’t get into trouble. When Pancakes started to do something wrong, the dog would tell her, ‘No!’”

  Lala stops moving.

  “Pancakes didn’t mean to go into your room. I think she got lost.”

  I wait.

  “And she didn’t mean to knock that box off the windowsill.”

  My mother’s lunch box.

  “I put everything back on the desk.” Lala holds her hands at her sides. “Pancakes says she’s sorry.”

  I try to imagine a penitent Pancakes.

  “I know I wasn’t supposed to be in your room,” says Lala, “but Pancakes wouldn’t come when I called her. So I had to go and get her.”

  When we arrive at the old riverbed, Lala runs down the bank and stands in the middle of the dry channel.

  “If we had a dog,” Lala shouts at me, “you wouldn’t be so sad.”

  WES STANFORD AND AUTUMN DARE are standing by the front porch of the school. Along with the guy who was on Nutty’s roof, whose name I’ve forgotten.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” says Wes.

  “Emma got us out on OR,” says Autumn. “Told us to meet her here.”

  Wes nods. “She’s going to help us with the town.”

  “Nothing but harassment,” says Autumn. “You’d think they had better things to do.”

  Jimmy, the guy’s name is Jimmy.

  “You got a nice place here, Mr. Camp,” says Jimmy. “1920s?”

  “We have ice cream,” says Lala. “And a lemon tart.”

  “Then you better get that ice cream into the freezer,” says Autumn.

  “If it melts,” says Lala, “I’ll use a straw.”

  NUTTY AND ADA are in the kitchen drinking tea. As soon as Ada sees the lemon tart, she gets a knife and cuts it into three pieces.

  “What about Pop-Up?”

  “Nutty’s sick,” says Ada. “But she’s too stubborn to admit it.”

  “I’m just tired,” says Nutty.

  “That’s ’cause you’re sick.”

  Lala helps me put the groceries away. She puts the ice cream in the freezer at the front where it will be easy to retrieve, and she sets the syrup in plain sight on the counter.

  Ada eats her piece of lemon tart in one bite. “They want to do more tests.”

  “I can help Grummy with tests,” says Lala. “I get gold stars on my tests.”

  “Don’t need no tests,” says Nutty. “Nothing wrong with me.”

  Ada points her fork at me. “We’re going to have to stay here a little longer,” she says. “Until Nutty’s better.”

  “That’s the big-screen television talking,” says Nutty. “And that cable service.”

  “Can’t put a sick old woman in a mouldy trailer.”

  “Who you calling old?”

  Through the window, I see Emma coming up the path, striding out, swinging her arms, as though she’s on her way to a military exercise.

  “Come on,” says Ada, “finish that tart. There’s a game on in a couple of minutes.”

  “All you think about is your baseball,” says Nutty.

  “Watching television is relaxing,” says Ada. “And relaxing will help you get better.”

  By the time I get back outside, Emma and the Neighbours are in the middle of a heated discussion.

  “How can they do this?” says Autumn. “It’s not right.”

  “And that’s why we’re going to fight them,” says Emma.

  “We can’t pay you,” says Wes. “We can’t even afford rent.”

  “That’s the first problem,” says Emma. “We have to get you guys a fixed address. A legal residence.”

  “How we going to do that?” says Jimmy.

&
nbsp; “Mayor shut down the shelter last year,” says Wes. “Said it was attracting ‘undesirables.’”

  “A homeless shelter that doesn’t want the homeless,” says Autumn. “Go figure.”

  “And the old box plant sure as hell ain’t an address we can use,” says Wes.

  “How many people we talking about?” asks Emma.

  “Eight families,” says Autumn. “Twenty-two, twenty-three people.”

  “Any serious issues?”

  Autumn tenses. “Like what?”

  Emma doesn’t back off. She plows right ahead. “Drugs, alcohol, mental health, domestic abuse.”

  The world goes silent.

  “Come on,” says Emma. “I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Wes shoves his hands in his pockets. “Some,” he says.

  “Okay,” says Emma. “We’ll need to sort that out. And how many of you get Ontario Works?”

  Emma and the Neighbours spend the next twenty minutes going over the new bylaw and the ways in which it might be challenged. Emma is in her element. She doesn’t waste time on anger and outrage. She lays out the situation in clear and concise terms.

  “So, if we can get the bylaw struck down,” says Autumn, “they’ll stop harassing us?”

  “No promises,” says Emma. “But we’re going to try.”

  “What about the legal address?” says Wes. “How you going to manage that?”

  I don’t see it coming until Emma turns to me with her gentle smile. “That dormitory room on the second floor,” she says. “How many people do you think it will hold?”

  32

  Even with the door to my room shut and locked and the lights turned off, I can hear people in the school.

  Everywhere.

  My school. My quiet place. My refuge from the world.

  Suddenly, I’m captive at a rock concert in the Rogers Centre. I can hear Ada in the kitchen arguing with Nutty. I can hear Lala trying to convince her mother that ice cream with chocolate syrup is a perfectly good snack before dinner.

  An appetizer.

  Now that she has the word, she wields it like a sword.

  My mother’s lunch box is on the desk. The stone, the photographs, the letter, the medal, and the bundle of maps are lined up, side by side. Either Pancakes is a very neat cat or she’s had help. The box itself has a new dent in one corner, and now the latch won’t close at all.

  In the old dormitory next to my room, Wes and Autumn and Jimmy try to figure out the sleeping arrangements for a crash of adults and a cackle of children.

  Temporary, temporary, temporary.

  I keep repeating this to myself, in case there is magic in the word. I use my new laptop to search the internet for noise-cancelling headphones. Just in case. There’s a well-reviewed pair for under five hundred dollars.

  THE REST OF THE EVENING is given over to the sounds of community. Ada and Nutty watching Murder, She Wrote reruns, Emma reading stories to Lala and singing songs in a vain attempt to get her daughter to bed. The Neighbours arriving in force, clumping up and down the stairs like a herd of elephants on the gallop.

  Pancakes arrives at my door, scratches frantically, wanting to get in, but she’s already made her bed, and there’s only enough air and darkness in the room for me.

  I try to press the dent out of the lunch box with my thumb and am somewhat successful. The lid sits slightly sideways, but now the latch catches. I arrange the memorabilia in the box as it was and set it back on the windowsill.

  Pancakes makes several more entreaties for sanctuary, thrusting a paw under the door and trying to pull herself through, making all sorts of promises she has no intention of keeping, pleading at decibels well above the legal limit.

  Just after midnight, I attach the forecast to an email and send it on its way. Then I crawl into bed, huddle against the wall, and wait for the world to end.

  EVIDENTLY, CHILDREN DON’T sleep in.

  At six the next morning, the school is on the move. The floor in my room shakes as the Neighbours empty out of the dormitory and onto the first floor. I take my time getting dressed, listening the while for a break in the clamour.

  I never realized just how quiet the school was until it wasn’t, didn’t realize how content I was with an empty building and an empty life.

  I get downstairs to find Lala and Ada and Nutty in the kitchen.

  “You missed all the fun,” says Nutty. “Forgot what a treat children are.”

  “Was a regular circus,” says Ada.

  “Dogs!” Lala shouts. “They have dogs!”

  And on cue, three dogs wander in from the porch and begin barking. Lala begins patting the dogs, calming them down.

  “This is Shadow and this is Diesel and this is Malibu.” Lala dances around the dogs. “Malibu is going to have babies, and I get to keep one.”

  “That’s not what your mother said,” says Ada.

  “I’ll call my puppy Waffles,” says Lala. “That way, it won’t matter if it’s a boy dog or a girl dog.”

  “Your mother said that there’s no room for a dog.”

  “But I’ll have to get a rope, so Waffles doesn’t run away.”

  “Emma’s gone to work,” says Nutty. “The Neighbours were going to take Lala to school with their kids, but she said that that was your job.”

  I can’t tell one dog from the other, and I’ve already forgotten their names. The large black one flops down on the floor and begins licking himself, while the small brown pooch, who looks like a scrub brush, starts scratching. I can hear the fleas exploding off its back.

  “We have to go now, Pop-Up.” Lala slides into her backpack. “Or I won’t get my gold star.”

  I look at the pile of half-eaten pieces of toast on the table.

  “You can get breakfast at the Piggy,” Ada tells me. “And you better pick up more bread and peanut butter.”

  “The grapes are gone as well,” says Nutty.

  ALL LALA CAN TALK ABOUT are the dogs.

  “Malibu can do tricks, which means she’s smart, and that means her puppies will be smart.”

  By now, Ash Locken will have received my forecast.

  “Shadow is really strong,” says Lala. “He looks after the other two.”

  Which means the fallout is on the horizon.

  “Diesel is the silly one. He makes me laugh.”

  Which means it should not be long in arriving.

  “But he’s not too smart.”

  Mrs. Takahashi comes around the bend in the trail. Koala is with her. The dog has a plastic cone on its head.

  “Mr. Camp.” Iku has a camera hanging around her neck. I recognize the brand. “How are you enjoying the binoculars?”

  As soon as Lala sees the labradoodle, she bolts and sprints up the path. By the time I get there, Koala is on her back and Lala is giving her a tummy rub.

  “Careful,” says Mrs. Takahashi. “She’s still healing.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She had an operation,” says Mrs. Takahashi. “That’s why she must wear the hood. So she doesn’t lick herself.”

  “An operation?”

  “A dog operation,” says Mrs. Takahashi.

  “We have dogs,” Lala announces. “Three dogs.”

  “Three dogs?” Mrs. Takahashi is equal parts surprise and concern. “What kind?”

  “A big one and two small ones,” says Lala.

  Takahashi turns the focus ring on the camera. “This was Keizo’s camera. It takes excellent pictures.”

  “I can take pictures with my phone.”

  Takahashi brings the camera up to her eye. “These dogs,” she says, “are they purebreds?”

  Lala looks to me for the right answer.

  “Do they have papers?”

  “On the back porch,” says Lala, “but mostly they go outside.”

  I GET LALA TO SCHOOL on time. In spite of stopping for Koala, Mrs. Takahashi, and her camera. But today, Lala is determined not to give up her cellphone
.

  “I’m not a baby,” she says. “I won’t use it during class.”

  I wait.

  “Linda has a cellphone, and she doesn’t use it during class.”

  I wait some more.

  “So I should be able to keep my cellphone.”

  I have a building full of people, most of whom I don’t know, as well as three dogs. I’m not about to get between a mother and her daughter over a cellphone.

  “Today could be a test,” says Lala. And she skips into the school with the phone. Before I have a chance to object.

  Even if I wanted to.

  I PICK UP A BROWNIE, but I don’t go to the Piggy right away. I wander out past the Petro-Can to the old Bambridge & Moore building. The plywood fence around the property is covered in graffiti, and there are gaps in the wood where the sheets have been torn off and replaced with wire mesh. The building has been deserted for years, has stood abandoned while the elements have begun to work their magic.

  But today, there is activity. A long-arm excavator with its ugly metal beak has been moved to within striking distance of the two-storey building, along with several wheel loaders that wait at the ready. Someone has set up a construction trailer on the property.

  A sign on the side of the trailer reads “Future Home of the Gleaming Community Centre.”

  As I stand at the fence and watch, a pickup pulls in and several men get out. One of them is Bob Loomis. He’s resplendent in Carhartts, Red Wings, and a Skullgard. He has a long paper tube in one hand that he waves around, as though he’s leading a marching band. All in all, he’s an arresting figure. The stiff new coveralls, the just-out-of-the-box work boots, the bright white hard hat.

  He certainly looks to be having a good time.

  So this is where the Neighbours have been staying. A roof over their heads. A place out of the wind and rain. It isn’t much. But it’s what they had.

  THE CAFÉ IS REASONABLY QUIET. The only people left are the Three Bears. They are at their usual table, bent over Wapi’s tablet.

  “About time.” Florence comes out of the kitchen. “You missed everyone.”