But that night the lady of the house didn’t seem to be around, or mobile anyway. Zipper himself came to the door, sweating like a pig in a filthy T-shirt. He’d been drumming along to the radio.
“What do you guys want?” says Zipper.
Gene holds up the bottle. “Party time.”
“I’m practising,” says Zipper.
“So you’re practising. What’s that to us?”
“My old lady’s sleeping on the sofa,” says Zipper, opening the door wide. “You want to fuck around here you do it in the basement.” Which means his old lady’d passed out. Nobody sleeps through Zipper on the drums.
“Gene.” Nancy was looking a bit shy, believe me.
My brother didn’t let on he’d even heard her. “Do I look particular? You know me, Zip.”
Zipper looked like maybe he had to think about that one. To tell the truth, he didn’t seem quite all there. At last he says, “Sure. Sure, I know you. Keep a cool tool.” And then, just like that, he wanders off to his drums, and leaves us standing there.
Gene laughs and shakes his head. “What a meatball.”
It makes me feel empty lots of times when I see Zipper. He’s so skinny and yellow and his eyes are always weepy-looking. They say there’s something gone wrong with his kidneys from all the gas and glue he sniffed when he was in elementary school.
Boy, he loves his drums though. Zipper’s really what you’d call dedicated. The sad thing is that the poor guy’s got no talent. He just makes a big fucking racket and he don’t know any better. You see, Zipper really thinks he’s going to make himself somebody with those drums, he really does. Who’d tell him any different?
Gene found some dirty coffee cups in the kitchen sink and started rinsing them out. While he did that I watched Nancy Williams. She hadn’t taken her coat off, in fact she was hugging it tight to her chest like she figured somebody was going to tear it off of her. I hadn’t noticed before she had on a little bit of lipstick. But now her face had gone so pale it made her mouth look bright and red and pinched like somebody had just slapped it, hard.
Zipper commenced slamming away just as the four of us got into the basement. Down there it sounded as if we were right inside a great big drum and Zipper was beating the skin directly over our heads.
And boy, did it stink in that place. Like the sewer had maybe backed up. But then there were piles of dirty laundry humped up on the floor all around an old wringer washing machine, so that could’ve been the smell too.
It was cold and sour down there and we had nothing to sit on but a couple of lawn chairs and a chesterfield that was all split and stained with what I think was you know what. Nancy looked like she wished she had a newspaper to spread out over it before she sat down. As I said before, you shouldn’t never take anybody nice to Zipper’s.
Gene poured rye into the coffee mugs he’d washed out and passed them around. Nancy didn’t want hers. “No thank you,” she told him.
“You’re embarrassing me, Nancy,” says Doreen. The way my date was sitting in the lawn chair beside me in her make-do mini I knew why Gene was all scrunched down on that wrecked chesterfield.
“You know I don’t drink, Doreen.” Let me explain that when Nancy said that it didn’t sound snotty. Just quiet and well-mannered like when a polite person passes up the parsnips. Nobody in their right minds holds it against them.
“You don’t do much, do you?” That was Gene’s two bits’ worth.
“I’ll say,” chips in Doreen.
Nancy doesn’t answer. I could hear old Zipper crashing and banging away like a madman upstairs.
“You don’t do much, do you?” Gene’s much louder this time.
“I suppose not.” I can barely hear her answer because her head’s down. She’s checking out the backs of her hands.
“Somebody in your position ought to try harder,” Doreen pipes up. “You don’t make yourself too popular when you go spoiling parties.”
Gene shoves the coffee mug at Nancy again. “Have a drink.”
She won’t take it. Principles.
“Have a drink!”
“Whyn’t you lay off her?”
Gene’s pissed off because he can’t make Nancy Williams do what he says, so he jumps off the chesterfield and starts yelling at me. “Who’s going to make me?” he hollers. “You? You going to make me?”
I can’t do nothing but get up too. I never won a fight with my brother yet, but that don’t mean I got to lay down and die for him. “You better take that sweater off,” I says, pointing, “it’s mine and I don’t want blood on it.” He always wears my clothes.
That’s when the cousin Doreen slides in between us. She’s the kind of girl loves fights. They put her centre stage. That is, if she can wriggle herself in and get involved breaking them up. Fights give her a chance to act all emotional and hysterical like she can’t stand all the violence. Because she’s so sensitive. Blessed are the peacemakers.
“Don’t fight! Please, don’t fight! Come on, Gene,” she cries, latching on to his arm, “don’t fight over her. Come away and cool down. I got to go to the bathroom. You show me where the bathroom is, Gene. Okay?”
“Don’t give me that. You can find the bathroom yourself.” Old Gene has still got his eyes fixed on me. He’s acting the role. Both of them are nuts.
“Come on, Gene, I’m scared to go upstairs with that Zipper person there! He’s so strange. I don’t know what he might get it in his head to do. Come on, take me upstairs.” Meanwhile this Doreen, who is as strong as your average sensitive ox, is sort of dragging my brother in the direction of the stairs. Him pretending he don’t really want to go and have a fuss made over him, because he’s got this strong urge to murder me or cripple me or something.
“You wait,” is all he says to me.
“Ah, quit it or I’ll die of shock,” I tell him.
“Please, Gene. That Zipper person is weird.”
At last he goes with her. I hear Gene on the stairs. “Zipper ain’t much,” he says, “I know lots of guys crazier than him.”
I look over to Nancy sitting quietly on that grungy chesterfield, feet together, hands turned palms up on her lap. Her dress kind of sticks out from under the hem of her coat all stiff and shiny and funny-looking.
“I shouldn’t have let her make me this dress,” she says, angry. “We ought to have gone downtown and bought a proper one. But she had this material.” She stops, pulls at the buttons of her coat and opens it. “Look at this thing. No wonder Gene doesn’t like it, I bet.”
At first I don’t know what to say when she looks at me like that, her face all white except for two hot spots on her cheekbones. Zipper is going nuts upstairs. He’s hot tonight. It almost sounds like something recognizable. “Don’t pay Gene any attention,” I say, “he’s a goof.”
“It’s awful, this dress.”
She isn’t that dumb. But a person needs a reason for why things go wrong. I’m not telling her she’s just a way to win ten dollars and prove a point.
“Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t drink that whiskey? Is that it?”
“Well, kind of. That’s part of it. He’s just a jerk. Take it from me, I know. Forget it.”
“I never even thought he knew I was alive. Never guessed. And here I was, crazy about him. Just crazy. I’d watch him in the hallway, you know? I traded lockers with Susan Braithwaite just to get closer to his. I went to all the hockey games to see him play. I worshipped him.”
The way she says that, well, it was too personal. Somebody oughtn’t to say that kind of a thing to a practical stranger. It was worse than if she’d climbed out of her clothes. It made me embarrassed.
“And funny thing is, all that time he really did think I was cute. He told me on the phone. But he never once thought to ask me out because I’m a Baptist. He was sure I couldn’t go. Because I’m a Baptist he thought I couldn’t go. But he thought I was cute all along.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And now,”
she says, “look at this. I begged and begged Dad to let me come. I practically got down on my hands and knees. And all those dancing lessons and everything and the band doesn’t show. Imagine.”
“Gene wouldn’t have danced with you anyway. He doesn’t dance.”
Nancy smiled at me. As if I was mental. She didn’t half believe me.
“Hey,” I says, just like that, you never know what’s going to get into you, “Nancy, you want to dance?”
“Now?”
“Now. Sure. Come on. We got the one-man band, Zipper, upstairs. Why not?”
“What’ll Gene say?”
“To hell with Gene. Make him jealous.”
She was human at least. She liked the idea of Gene jealous. “Okay.”
And here I got a confession to make. I go on all the time about Gene not being able to dance. Well, me neither. But I figured what the fuck. You just hop around and hope to hell you don’t look too much like you’re having a convulsion.
Neither of us knew how to get started. We just stood gawking at one another. Upstairs Zipper was going out of his tree. It sounded like there was four of him. As musical as a bag of hammers he is.
“The natives are restless tonight, Giles,” I says. I was not uncomfortable. Let me tell you another one.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. It was just dumb.”
Nancy starts to sway from side to side, shuffling her feet. I figure that’s the signal. I hop or whatever. So does she. We’re out of the gates, off and running.
To be perfectly honest, Nancy Williams can’t dance for shit. She gets this intense look on her face like she’s counting off in her head, and starts to jerk. Which gets some pretty interesting action out of the notorious matched set but otherwise is pretty shoddy. And me? Well, I’m none too coordinated myself, so don’t go getting no mental picture of Fred Astaire or whoever.
In the end what you had was two people who can’t dance, dancing to the beat of a guy who can’t drum. Still, Zipper didn’t know no better and at the time neither did we. We were just what you’d call mad dancing fools. We danced and danced and Zipper drummed and drummed and we were all together and didn’t know it. Son of a bitch, the harder we danced the hotter and happier Nancy Williams’ face got. It just smoothed the unhappiness right out of it. Mine too, I guess.
That is, until all of a sudden it hit her. She stops dead in her tracks and asks, “Where’s Doreen and Gene?”
Good question. They’d buggered off in my old man’s car. Zipper didn’t know where.
The rest of the evening was kind of a horror story. It took me a fair while to convince Nancy they hadn’t gone for Cokes or something and would be right back. In the end she took it like a trooper. The only thing she’d say was, “That Doreen. That Doreen,” and shake her head. Of course she said it about a thousand times. I was wishing she’d shut up or maybe give us a little variety like “That Gene.” No way.
I had a problem. How to get Cinderella home before twelve-thirty, seeing as Gene had the family chariot. I tried Harvey’s Taxi but no luck. Harvey’s Taxi is one car and Harvey, and both were out driving lunches to a crew doing overtime at the mine.
Finally, at exactly twelve-thirty, we struck out on foot in this blizzard. Jesus, was it snowing. There was slush and ice water and every kind of shit and corruption all over the road. Every time some hunyak roared by us we got splattered by a sheet of cold slop. The snow melted in our hair and run down our necks and faces. By the time we went six blocks we were soaked. Nancy was the worst off because she wasn’t dressed too good with nylons and the famous dress and such. I seen I had to be a gentleman so I stopped and give her my gloves, and my scarf to tie around her head. The two of us looked like those German soldiers I seen on TV making this death march out of Russia, on that series Canada at War. That was a very educational series. It made you think of man’s inhumanity to man quite often.
“I could just die,” she kept saying. “Dad is going to kill me. This is my last dance ever. I could just die. I could just die. That Doreen. Honestly!”
When we stumbled up her street, all black because of the lack of street-lights, I could see that her house was all lit up. Bad news. I stopped her on the corner. Just then it quits snowing. That’s typical.
She stares at the house. “Dad’s waiting.”
“I guess I better go no further.”
Nancy Williams bends down and feels her dress where it sticks out from under her coat. “It’s soaked. I don’t know how much it cost a yard. I could just die.”
“Well,” I says, repeating myself like an idiot, “I guess I better go no further.” Then I try and kiss her. She sort of straight-arms me. I get the palm of my own glove in the face.
“What’re you doing?” She sounds mad.
“Well, you know -”
“I’m not your date,” she says, real offended. “I’m your brother’s date.”
“Maybe we could go out some time?”
“I won’t be going anywhere for a long time. Look at me. He’s going to kill me.”
“Well, when you do? I’m in no hurry.”
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand? Daddy will never let me go out with anybody named Simpson again. Ever. Not after tonight.”
“Ever?”
“I can’t imagine what you’d have to do to redeem yourself after this mess. That’s how Daddy puts it – you’ve got to redeem yourself. I don’t even know how I’m going to do it. And none of it’s my fault.”
“Yeah,” I says, “he’ll remember me. I’m the one he took the picture of.”
She didn’t seem too upset at not having me calling. “Everything is ruined,” she says. “If you only knew.”
Nancy Williams turns away from me then and goes up that dark, dark street where there’s nobody awake except at her house. Wearing my hat and gloves.
Nancy Williams sits third pew from the front, left-hand side. I sit behind her, on the other side so’s I can watch her real close. Second Sunday I was there she wore her Christmas Dance dress.
Funny thing, everything changes. At first I thought I’d start going and maybe that would redeem myself with her old man. Didn’t work. He just looks straight through me.
You ought to see her face when she sings those Baptist hymns. It gets all hot and happy-looking, exactly like it did when we were dancing together and Zipper was pounding away there up above us, where we never even saw him. When her face gets like that there’s no trouble in it, by no means.
It’s like she’s dancing then, I swear. But to what I don’t know. I try to hear it. I try and try. I listen and listen to catch it. Christ, somebody tell me. What’s she dancing to? Who’s the drummer?
Cages
HERE IT IS, 1967, the Big Birthday. Centennial Year they call it. The whole country is giving itself a pat on the back. Holy shit, boys, we made it.
I made it too for seventeen years, a spotless life, as they say, and for presents I get, in my senior year of high school, my graduating year for chrissakes, a six-month suspended sentence for obstructing a police officer, and my very own personal social worker.
The thing is I don’t need this social worker woman. She can’t tell me anything I haven’t already figured out for myself. Take last Wednesday. Miss Krawchuk, who looks like the old widow chicken on the Bugs Bunny show, the one who’s hot to trot for Foghorn Leghorn, says to me: “You know, Billy, your father loves you just as much as he does Gene. He doesn’t have a favourite.”
Now I can get bullshit at the poolroom any time I want it – and without having to keep an appointment. Maybe Pop loves me as much as he does Gene, but Gene is still his favourite kid. Everybody has a favourite kid. I knew that much already when I was only eight and Gene was nine. I figured it out right after Gene almost blinded me.
Picture this. There the two of us were in the basement. It was Christmas holidays and the old man had kicked us downstairs to chuck darts at this board he’d give us for a present. Somehow, I
must’ve had horseshoes up my ass. I’d beat Gene six games straight. And was he pissed off! He never loses to me at nothing ever. And me being in such a real unique situation, I was giving him the needle-rooney.
“What’s that now?” I said. “Is that six or seven what I won?”
“Luck,” Gene said, and he sounded like somebody was slowly strangling him. “Luck. Luck. Luck.” He could hardly get it out.
And that’s when I put the capper on it. I tossed a bull’s-eye. “Read’er and weep,” I told him. That’s what the old man says whenever he goes out at rummy. It’s his needle-rooney. “Read’er and weep.”
That did it. The straw what broke the frigging camel’s back. All I saw was his arm blur when he let fly at me. I didn’t even have time to think about ducking. Bingo. Dead centre in the forehead, right in the middle of the old noggin he drills me with a dart. And there it stuck. Until it loosened a bit. Then it sagged down real slow between my eyes, hung for a second, slid off of my nose, and dropped at my feet. I hollered bloody blue murder, you better believe it.
For once, Pop didn’t show that little bastard any mercy. He took after him from room to room whaling him with this extension cord across the ass, the back of the legs, the shoulders. Really hard. Gene, naturally, was screaming and blubbering and carrying on like it was a goddamn axe murder or something. He’d try to get under a bed, or behind a dresser or something, and get stuck halfway. Then old Gene would really catch it. He didn’t know whether to plough forward, back up, shit, or go blind. And all the time the old man was lacing him left and right and saying in this sad, tired voice: “You’re the oldest. Don’t you know no better? You could of took his eye out, you crazy little bugger.”
But that was only justice. He wasn’t all that mad at Gene. Me he was mad at. If that makes any sense. Although I have to admit he didn’t lay a hand on me. But yell? Christ, can that man yell. Especially at me. Somehow I’m the one that drives him squirrelly.
Man Descending Page 11
