Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  You both look festive, he says.

  Incredible, Chas says, looking about.

  Aristedes is tongue-tied. When he is ready to talk he says, This place brings the joy of tears to me.

  By the time Wendy and Joey arrive, the rum has been cracked and Aristedes is singing a Greek carol blessing the room and all that are in it. He leads everyone in a round of carols and, when he’s finished, he motions toward the special cake he’s brought, promising a coin in every piece.

  Shall I sing another? he asks.

  Without waiting for an answer, he breaks into “Jingle Bells” with Lucy and Vedrana joining in while Wendy and Joey snack on the goodies.

  Chas sidles up.

  You seem sort of stressed out. Is the party making you tense?

  No.

  He points to the papers sticking out of Henry’s pocket.

  What’s that?

  Nothing.

  Look, I don’t want to break the mood, but I might have an idea what’s going on. We stopped at Norman’s Hawaiian on our way here and that skinny broad you used to work with was there with her boyfriend.

  Right.

  That boyfriend’s not too bright. This farm’s condemned, isn’t it?

  You heard that?

  And he’s going to use it to drive the price down.

  What?

  Would I make this shit up?

  Come talk outside. Wendy doesn’t know anything yet. I don’t want to wreck her Christmas.

  Carry on with the singing everybody, Chas calls to the room. Henry and I are going outside to look for Santa.

  Chas looks like an angel under the outside light. Henry inclines his heads toward him while they talk.

  You’re sure it was her?

  Yeah, I’m sure, skinny broad with a bad dye job.

  Maybe I should speak to Chief. Would you be willing to back me up if I go to him with this information?

  Of course, our new business depends on it. And look, I don’t mean to make things worse, but you’re coming back into town with us tonight. Right?

  Why?

  Well, you have a mound of mail you didn’t open last weekend and this banker dude keeps calling, saying it’s urgent you get in touch.

  About what?

  Don’t know, but I’m guessing you owe his bank some money.

  Oh, maybe there isn’t enough in my account for the mortgage.

  And there’s one other thing. The city wants into the suite to have a look.

  Oh God. Let’s go inside, this is too much.

  When Chas and Henry return to the room, steam is rising off their bodies from standing in the cold. Aristedes has cracked one of his bottles of retsina and he’s got everyone in a conga line. A slightly inebriated Joey breaks in to announce it’s time for presents. He wobbles out of the room and across the yard toward the house. Henry shoots Wendy a look — he doesn’t think she should let Joey drink. He told her so, but she said, It’s not your business.

  After a minute, Joey weaves his way back into the room. He holds out a box toward his mother, pulls the lid off and says, I’m going to skin it for you, Mom.

  Wendy seems genuinely relieved when she sees the dead frozen mink, but Henry’s practically numb with the spate of bad news. He just wants the party to be over. All the others start pulling out gifts. Chas has a card for Joey with a Mustang car on it and twenty dollars inside.

  Start saving, he says.

  Thanks, man, Joey answers.

  Wendy gives everyone something from Norman’s — pots of Hawaiian pineapple marmalade, boxes of macadamia nuts.

  In a bid to get it all over with, Henry uncovers his chicken bottles with a Ta-Da and Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. But everyone is too festive to catch on. They all coo and hug their gifts, and start another conga line, each carrying a new feathered friend while they dance. It takes him another hour and a half before he’s able to shut the party down and ride back home to Kitsilano, sullen in the back seat of the Mustang.

  On the Monday morning, Christmas Eve, Henry does not go out to the farm. Wendy told him to take the holiday week off, she and Joey could handle things, so long as he was back by January 2nd to help with the hatching chicks. He sits at the kitchen window and plays with the phone cord. A stack of opened mail is at his elbow. It’s taken him the entire weekend to work up the energy to tackle it. On the top of the heap are the four kill orders, under those a foreclosure notice from the bank’s lawyer, a bylaw infraction from the city’s lawyer, a notice from the Court in Idaho reminding him of his January 4th appearance date, a Visa bill with an additional $54 in interest, and a Christmas card with poinsettias from Mrs. Krumpskey. Her handwriting is so bad he thinks at first she has written Baby Jeans pays for Henry. When he finally reads it properly, he feels no joy that Baby Jesus prays for Henry.

  He picks up the phone and dials Chief’s number at Agriculture. The phone rings and rings. He tries again, same thing. He’s waited all weekend to make the call. Then he remembers that it being December 24th probably means the stingy government has given everybody time off again in lieu of a real Christmas bonus. He drums his fingers on the pile of kill orders. He picks the phone up again and this time calls City Hall. A pleasant-sounding receptionist answers, Season’s Greetings.

  Greetings, Henry says. Bylaw inspector’s office please.

  I’m sorry, sir, that department is closed for the holiday. Is this an emergency?

  Not really, he says.

  He puts the phone in its cradle and rips up the first copy of the kill order. Somehow there is a balance between the unavailability of any of his potential saviours and annihilation. Although he is the Star Man.

  He dials again, this time to the bank manager. The call is answered by a series of bizarre clicks and rewind sounds while an answering machine attempts to receive, then kicks in with the tail end of a message . . . Holiday.

  Happy Holiday to you too, he says, tossing bits of the kill order over his head.

  Next he grabs the foreclosure notice and dials the number of the lawyer at the bottom of it.

  Patrick Madeira, a voice says.

  Henry is not prepared for anyone to answer but, now that he thinks about it, it figures the foreclosure lawyer would be working Christmas Eve. He begins to form a question, but he can’t do it. He hangs up on the lawyer’s voice asking, Anyone there? He folds the remaining three kill orders into tiny squares and puts them back on top of the pile. The shredding game really isn’t any fun.

  What’s going on in here? Chas asks.

  You’re not working today either? Henry says.

  You should talk, sitting in your pyjamas with a mess of confetti around you. Any coffee made yet?

  Listen, do you feel like driving down to Idaho at the end of next week? Take a couple of days off, do a three-day weekend thing.

  What are you talking about?

  I’ve got something I need to take care of down there and I could use a ride. Besides, you sorta still owe me for rent from last fall.

  I guess I could do that, a drive in lieu. Can Aristedes come?

  Sure, the more the merrier.

  Christmas Day, Henry wakes up alone in the house. He feels like a block of stone, entombed, completely unable to move any part of his mind or body. He lies very still for a long time. He has felt sad, nervous, anxious, tense, sick to his stomach, and weepy, but he’s never felt this sort of hit-by-a-Mack-truck-stuck-in-depression before. Except maybe for a time when he was a highschool dropout with no job. But this is different, this feels more adult, more grim. For the first time in his life he is seriously worried his mother’s bipolar has hit him. Dr. Davis once told him that Christmas week is the busiest time in psychiatric emerg, and that he should watch his mother carefully that week. He understands why now. He even starts to think about offing himself. How might he do it? Are there books on it in the library? He heard that gassing yourself is painless, but the Subaru is probably pretty useless for that as all her gases seem to fly out
the backend right now. He knows the expression sucking on a tailpipe but he doesn’t believe that is actually how it is done. The only thought that gives him any relief is a silly one: he has access to a lot of chicken methane gas. He feels certain that wouldn’t work as his body is so used to it it would probably just think another day at the ranch. Still the silliness of death by chicken gas makes him feel okay enough to get up and cook himself some Christmas oatmeal with a little cinnamon and brown sugar. He sits at the table for three hours.

  As the week wears on, his emotional stability comes and goes. Chas and Aristedes spend most of their free time with each other, sometimes tucked away at Aristedes’ condo, and sometimes holed up in Chas’ room. When they’re in, Henry thinks he’d prefer it if they were out, until they actually leave and he is alone in the house, which then seems cavernous and drafty. Mostly, all he does is worry. He calls Wendy a couple of times, ostensibly to check on the chicks. They still just look like eggs, she tells him. But will they come on time? he asks. Like clockwork, twenty-one days from conception, she says. The truth is he’s worried about the chicks, he’s worried about himself and worried they’ll be born late, on the day he has to leave for Idaho, he’s worried his promise to Wendy to be there as soon as they start to hatch will be broken. Such a slim margin of error. What will it matter if he offs himself? Many times in the week his cycle of thought ends on this one.

  Between worried calls to Wendy, he tallies up columns of numbers, trying to make projections about the new business and his debts. But the numbers never come close to balancing, even when he projects profits at double what they already have contracts for. There’s no doubt he’s going to have to sell the house or let it go on foreclosure, but where will he live? It would be presumptuous to think Wendy will let him stay forever in the Constellation Room, and then there is the worry that Bob will actually convince her to sell the farm.

  On the Friday at the end of Christmas week, Henry checks the mail to see what new disasters have arrived. He rips open the envelope from Agriculture Canada expecting another worry. Instead he reads that vacation pay is owed to him, but they can’t calculate the amount because there’s some confusion over his final date of departure. The boss of the HR department, a woman named Sue, has added in handwriting at the bottom call any day over the holidays if you want, someone has to be here! Henry doubts that, but by the Monday morning curiosity as to how much might be owing gets the better of him, and he calls.

  Agriculture Canada, a man’s voice says.

  Chief? Is that you? Henry asks.

  Yeah, who is this?

  It’s Henry. What are you doing there on New Year’s Eve?

  It’s a long story.

  I’m sure it is. How be I come out and hear about it in person? I’ve got a couple of things need discussing.

  How ’bout you do that.

  Henry rides the bus out to Still Creek Drive with the unsettling kill orders in his top jacket pocket and the vacation pay letter in his jeans pocket. When he gets to the office the chief spends the first five minutes sucking on a soda can and whining about being the only one who has to do a day’s work over the holiday season, then launches into a painfully long story about how the union negotiated a two-week Christmas holiday for its members in lieu of the government not fulfilling the usual usurious hourly wage request, and how the chief being management was not included in the bargain, so when the Deputy Minister issued a directive that no government office could be closed for a period of more than four consecutive work days, Chief was the one pressed into service.

  What about Elaine? Henry asks.

  Ahhh. She already had a holiday approved so I got stuck with it, Chief answers.

  Just as well, I’m here partly to discuss something that concerns Elaine.

  Boring. Okay, shoot.

  Henry lays out the background, emphasizing Elaine’s relationship with the creep Bob, and the conversation Chas overheard involving the plot to take over Lightstone’s Farm. And then he produces the kill orders.

  Chief smooths out the creases with his hands.

  Whatcha been doing with these, Japanese paper folding?

  It was a moment of frustration, Henry replies.

  Chief takes a big suck on his soda before he strolls to the filing cabinet where office copies of the orders are kept. He walks his fingers across the tops of the files, rifles through the in-basket on the top of the cabinet, and comes back to his seat for another swig of soda.

  Nothing there, he says.

  Maybe Elaine took them with her, Henry says.

  That’s a technical default then — leave it with me. Chief gestures with his hand and knocks over his soda. Pink liquid fizzes out of the can, spills across the desk, and is sopped up by the orders. Aw hell. Chief wads the orders into a ball of soaking paper and pitches them into the garbage can. Okay? he says. Gone.

  Sure thing, Chief. As always good doing business with you.

  Then why’d you quit? Chief asks.

  Well that’s the other thing I came about. Henry produces the vacation pay letter.

  Chief rubs his bald head while he reads the letter. He looks amused and says, You don’t really think I know about this vacation pay stuff, do you? You’ll have to call HR on this.

  Umm. Henry smiles back at him.

  On the ride home Henry ruminates about what Chief said. He’d been so focused on the kill orders, the implications of the word quit hadn’t sunk in. But as the bus makes its way down Lougheed Highway, he begins to wonder. Did Elaine ever tell Chief that she’d fired him? Did Chief really think he’d quit? He feels like he’s in too deep with the new business plan to contemplate returning to work, but still thoughts about quitting and being fired rumble through his head until he begins to feel woozy swinging on the bus pole. At the corner of Broadway and Main he gets a seat, but by then his head is pounding and Alice is talking to him. You’re the cause, Henry. You never stand up for yourself.

  His sore head starts to turn annoyance into a starburst migraine. Blue and red stars shoot across his eyes. By the time he’s off the bus, it’s all he can do to walk home and get into bed, though in a weird way he’s relieved it’s only physical pain. It’s a lot easier to handle than that psychic pain he’s been feeling most of the week. And thank goodness Chas and Aristedes are out somewhere celebrating New Year’s Eve.

  Henry awakes New Year’s Day to a panicked call from Wendy.

  Either we miscalculated or the chicks are arriving a day early, she says.

  What?

  I can hear them chirping inside their shells. Get out here.

  He sets the phone down and pads bleary-eyed across the hall to Chas’ room. He knocks, knocks again, and after a few seconds sticks his head into the room. It’s quiet. Either Chas is not there, or he’s died under the mound of covers from too much piss of the rat, as they all now like to call retsina. Henry suspects he’s not there, but he pokes at the covers anyway. They deflate. His head pounds as if he’s the one who’s had too much retsina. Tiny flecks of light shoot across his vision. There’s no way he can take a bus all the way to Langley.

  He picks up the phone.

  Any chance you can come and pick me up? he asks Wendy.

  Someone needs to stay here and watch the eggs. I’ll send Joey.

  Joey?

  Yeah, he got his license just before Christmas. Don’t you remember?

  No. Is he safe?

  Course he’s safe. Gotta go.

  He scribbles a note for Chas to remind him they need to be on the road to Idaho by 9:00 AM on Thursday. Then he sits at the front window, waiting and worrying. What kind of driver can Joey be with a one-week-old license? He can’t remember ever seeing him at the wheel of a car let alone hearing anything about driver’s lessons. He knows from his own lessons that, aside from those who are drunk, the number one cause of deaths is new drivers improperly merging onto the highway.

  After centuries, Wendy’s small grey Toyota approaches too fast down 7th Avenue, Jo
ey hunched behind the wheel. Joey tries a headfirst park in a spot that’s too small to take even Wendy’s car, and the stars of Henry’s migraine shoot again. Joey lines up to try a second time. Henry flies out the front door in his hard-soled shoes, onto the icy porch, where he slides off the edge, and down three steps to land on the end of his tailbone. He hops up in that older-guy-makes-a-fool-of-self-in-front-of-cocky-teenage-boy way and hobbles toward the car. Good thing Joey can’t see the feathers he put in his underpants this morning.

  Man, that was spectacular, Joey says.

  Thanks and Happy New Year to you too, Henry says.

  No, seriously, are you okay?

  Sure. Sure. Not a problem. I do that every morning as a wake-up call.

  The truth is, his rear end is throbbing, his head is pounding and his knob has gone numb — something the feathers are supposed to prevent. As if that is not enough, once they start driving he has to grip the armrest every time Joey takes a corner because of the speed at which they travel. Joey actually lays rubber at one corner.

  You’re driving kind of fast. Lots of cops out this time of year looking for drunks, Henry says.

  Good point, man. I only had a couple of beers before I left. Hair of the dog, you know. But you can’t be too careful.

  Now that Joey mentions it, Henry can smell alcohol. He looks around to see if there’s an open bottle in the car, and tries to relax when he sees none. But as they approach the highway on-ramp at Willingdon, heavy rain pelts the car and Joey begins to drive so slowly Henry worries about the merge. Almost at the highway, they traverse a huge puddle of water, and a tsunami hits the windshield.

  Henry is certain now that he broke his back in the fall, possibly severed all the nerves to his penis. He grips the armrest and closes his eyes.

  Why are you screaming? Joey asks.

  Henry opens his eyes. They are on Highway 1 proceeding at a proper speed, light rain hitting the windshield, and Joey has both hands in the proper 10-2 position on the wheel.