Man Descending

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  “Don’t you never, never tease him again!” he bellowed and his neck started to swell. When the old man gets mad you can see it swell, honest. “You know he can’t keep a hold of himself. One day you’ll drive him so goddamn goofy with that yap of yours he’ll do something terrible! Something he’ll regret for the rest of his life. And it’ll all be your fault!” The old man had to stop there and slow down or a vein would’ve exploded in his brain, or his arsehole popped inside out, or something. “So smarten up,” he said, a little quieter, finally, “or you’ll be the death of me and all my loved ones.”

  So there you are. I never pretended the world was fair, and I never bitched because it wasn’t. But I do resent the hell out of being forced to listen to some dried-up old broad who gets paid by the government to tell me it is. Fuck her. She never lived in the Simpson household with my old man waiting around for Gene to do that terrible thing. It spoils the atmosphere. Makes a person edgy, you know?

  Of course, Gene has done a fair number of bad things while everybody was waiting around for him to do the one great big terrible thing; and he’s done them in a fair number of places. That’s because the old man is a miner, and for a while there he was always telling some foreman to go piss up a rope. So we moved around a lot. That’s why the Simpson household has a real history. But Gene’s is the best of all. In Elliot Lake he failed grade three; in Bombertown he got picked up for shoplifting; in Flin Flon he broke some snotty kid’s nose and got sent home from school. And every grade he goes higher, it gets a little worse. Last year, when we were both in grade eleven, I’m sure the old man was positive Gene was finally going to pull off the terrible thing he’s been worrying about as long as I can remember.

  It’s crazy. Lots of times when I think about it, I figure I don’t get on with the old man because I treat him nice. That I try too hard to make him like me. I’m not the way Gene is, I respect Pop. He slogs it out, shift after shift, on a shitty job he hates. Really hates. In fact, he told me once he would have liked to been a farmer. Which only goes to show you how crazy going down that hole day after day makes you. Since we moved to Saskatchewan I’ve seen lots of farmers, and if you ask me, being one doesn’t have much to recommend it.

  But getting back to that business of being nice to Dad. Last year I started waiting up for him to come home from the afternoon shift. The one that runs from four p.m. in the afternoon until midnight. It wasn’t half bad. Most nights I’d fall asleep on the chesterfield with the TV playing after Mom went to bed. Though lots of times I’d do my best to make it past the national news to wait for Earl Cameron and his collection of screwballs. Those guys kill me. They’re always yapping off because somebody or something rattled their chain. Most of those characters with all the answers couldn’t pour piss out of a rubber boot if they read the instructions printed on the sole. They remind me of Gene; he’s got all the answers too. But still, quite a few of them are what you’d call witty. Which Gene is in his own way too.

  But most times, as I say, I’d doze off. Let me give you a sample evening. About twelve-thirty the lights of his half-ton would come shooting into the living-room, bouncing off the walls, scooting along the ceiling when he wheeled into the driveway like a madman. It was the lights flashing in my eyes that woke me up most nights, and if that didn’t do it there was always his grand entrance. When the old man comes into the house, from the sound of it you’d think he never heard of door knobs. I swear sometimes I’m sure he’s taking a battering-ram to the back door. Then he thunks his lunch bucket on the kitchen counter and bowls his hard hat into the landing. This is because he always comes home from work mad. Never once in his life has a shift ever gone right for that man. Never. They could pack his pockets with diamonds and send him home two hours early and he’d still bitch. So every night was pretty much the same. He had a mad on. Like in my sample night.

  He flicked on the living-room light and tramped over to his orange recliner with the bottle of Boh. “If you want to ruin your eyes, do it on school-books, not on watching TV in the goddamn dark. It’s up to somebody in this outfit to make something of themselves.”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “You ought to sleep in bed.” Keerash! He weighs two hundred and forty-four pounds and he never sits down in a chair. He falls into it. “Who’s that? Gary Cooper?” he asked. He figures any movie star on the late show taller than Mickey Rooney is Cooper. He doesn’t half believe you when you tell him they aren’t.

  “Cary Grant.”

  “What?”

  “Cary Grant. Not Gary Cooper. Cary Grant.”

  “Oh.” There he sat in his recliner, big meaty shoulders sagging, belly propped up on his belt buckle like a pregnant pup’s. Eyes red and sore, hair all mussed up, the top of his beer bottle peeking out of his fist like a little brown nipple. He has cuts all over those hands of his, barked knuckles and raspberries that never heal because the salt in the potash ore keeps them open, eats right down to the bone sometimes.

  “How’d it go tonight?”

  “Usual shit. We had a breakdown.” He paused. “Where’s your brother? In bed?”

  “Out.”

  “Out? Out? Out? What kind of goddamn answer is that? Out where?”

  I shrugged.

  “Has he got his homework done?” That’s the kind of question I get asked. Has your brother got his homework done?

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “I don’t know why you don’t help him with his schoolwork,” the old man said, peeved as usual.

  “You mean do it for him.”

  “Did I say that? Huh? I said help him. Didn’t I say that?” he griped, getting his shit in a knot.

  He thinks it’s that easy. Just screw the top off old Gene and pour it in. No problem. Like an oil change.

  “He’s got to be around to help,” I said.

  That reminded him. He jumped out of the chair and gawked up and down the deserted street. “It’s almost one o’clock. On a school night. I’ll kick his ass.” He sat down and watched the screen for a while and sucked on his barley sandwich.

  Finally, he made a stab at acting civilized. “So how’s baseball going?”

  “What?”

  “Baseball. For chrissakes clean out your ears. How’s it going?”

  “I quit last year. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” He didn’t say nothing at first. Then he said: “You shouldn’t have. You wasn’t a bad catcher.”

  “The worst. No bat and no arm – just a flipper. They stole me blind.”

  “But you had the head,” said the old man. And the way he said it made him sound like he was pissed at me for mean-mouthing myself. That surprised me. I felt kind of good about that. “You had the head,” he repeated, shaking his own. “I never told you but Al came up to me at work and said you were smart back there behind the plate. He said he wished Gene had your head.”

  I can’t say that surprised me. Gene is one of those cases of a million-dollar body carrying around a ten-cent head. He’s a natural. Flop out his glove and, smack, the ball sticks. He’s like Mickey Mantle. You know those stop-action photos where they caught Mickey with his eyes glommed onto the bat, watching the ball jump off the lumber? That’s Gene. And he runs like a Negro, steals bases like Maury Wills for chrissake.

  But stupid and conceited? You wouldn’t believe the half of it. Give him the sign to bunt to move a runner and he acts as if you’re asking him to bare his ass in public. Not him. He’s a big shot. He swings for the fence. Nothing less. And old Gene is always in the game, if you know what I mean? I don’t know what happens when he gets on base, maybe he starts thinking of the hair pie in the stands admiring him or something, but he always dozes off at the wheel. Once he even started to comb his hair at first base. Here it is, a 3 and 2 count with two men out, and my brother forgets to run on the pitch because he’s combing his hair. I could have died. Really I could have. The guy is such an embarrassment sometimes.

  “He can have my head,” I sa
id to Pop. “If I get his girls.”

  That made the old man wince. He’s sure that Gene is going to knock up one of those seat-covers he takes out and make him a premature grandpa.

  “You pay attention to school. There’s plenty of time later for girls.” And up he jumped again and stuck his nose against the window looking for Gene again. Mom has to wash the picture window once a week; he spots it all up with nose grease looking for Gene.

  “I don’t know why your mother lets him out of the house,” he said. “Doesn’t she have any control over that boy?”

  That’s what he does, blames everybody but himself. Oh hell, maybe nobody’s to blame. Maybe Gene is just Gene, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

  “I don’t know what she’s supposed to do. You couldn’t keep him in if you parked a tank in the driveway and strung barbed wire around the lot.”

  Of course that was the wrong thing to say. I usually say it.

  “Go to bed!” he yelled at me. “You’re no better than your brother. I don’t see you in bed neither. What’d I do, raise alley cats or kids? Why can’t you two keep hours like human beings!”

  And then the door banged and we knew the happy wanderer was home. Gene makes almost as much noise as the old man does when he comes in. It’s beneath his dignity to sneak in like me.

  Dad hoisted himself out of the chair and steamed off for the kitchen. He can move pretty quick for a big guy when he wants to. Me, I was in hot pursuit. I don’t like to miss much.

  Old Gene was hammered, and grinning from ass-hole to earlobes. The boy’s got a great smile. Even when he grins at old ladies my mother’s age you can tell they like it.

  “Come here and blow in my face,” said my father.

  “Go on with you,” said Gene. All of a sudden the smile was gone and he was irritated. He pushed past Pop, took the milk out of the fridge and started to drink out of the container.

  “Use a glass.”

  Gene burped. He’s a slob.

  “You stink of beer,” said the old man. “Who buys beer for a kid your age?”

  “I ain’t drunk,” said Gene.

  “Not much. Your eyes look like two piss-holes in the snow.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Gene. He lounged, he swivelled over to me and lifted my Players out of my shirt pocket. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” he said, taking out a smoke. I heard that one before.

  “I don’t want to lose my temper,” said Dad, being patient with him as usual, “so don’t push your luck, sunshine.” The two of them eyeballed it, hard. Finally Gene backed down, looked away and fiddled with his matches. “I don’t ride that son of a bitch of a cage up and down for my health. I do it for you two,” Dad said. “But I swear to God, Gene, if you blow this year of school there’ll be a pair of new work boots for you on the back step, come July 1. Both of you know my rules. Go to school, work, or pack up. I’m not having bums put their feet under my table.”

  “I ain’t scared of work,” said Gene. “Anyways, school’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Well, you climb in the cage at midnight with three hours of sleep and see if that ain’t a pain in the ass. Out there nobody says, please do this, please do that. It ain’t school out there, it’s life.”

  “Ah, I wouldn’t go to the mine. The mine sucks.”

  “Just what the hell do you think you’d do?”

  “He’d open up shop as a brain surgeon,” I said. Of course, Gene took a slap at me and grabbed at my shirt. He’s a tough guy. He wasn’t really mad, but he likes to prevent uppityness.

  “You go to bed!” the old man hollered. “You ain’t helping matters.”

  So off I went. I could hear them wrangling away even after I closed my door. You’d wonder how my mother does it, but she sleeps through it all. I think she’s just so goddamn tired of the three of us she’s gone permanently deaf to the sound of our voices. She just don’t hear us any more.

  The last thing I heard before I dropped off was Pop saying: “I’ve rode that cage all my life, and take it from me, there wasn’t a day I didn’t wish I’d gone to school and could sit in an office in a clean white shirt.” Sometimes he can’t remember what he wants to be, a farmer or a pencil-pusher.

  The cage. He’s always going on about the cage. It’s what the men at the mine call the elevator car they ride down the shaft. They call it that because it’s all heavy reinforced-steel mesh. The old man has this cage on the brain. Ever since we were little kids he’s been threatening us with it. Make something of yourself, he’d warn us, or you’ll end up like your old man, a monkey in the cage! Or: What’s this, Gene? Failed arithmetic? Just remember dunces don’t end up in the corner. Hell no, they end up in the cage! Look at me! My old man really hates that cage and the mine. He figures it’s the worst thing you can threaten anybody with.

  I was in the cage, once. A few years ago, when I was fourteen, the company decided they’d open the mine up for tours. It was likely the brainstorm of some public relations tit sitting in head office in Chicago. In my book it was kind of like taking people into the slaughterhouse to prove you’re kind to the cows. Anyway, Pop offered to take us on one of his days off. As usual, he was about four years behind schedule. When we were maybe eleven we might have been nuts about the idea, but just then it didn’t thrill us too badly. Gene, who is about as subtle as a bag of hammers, said flat out he wasn’t interested. I could see right away the old man was hurt by that. It isn’t often he plays the buddy to his boys, and he probably had the idea he could whiz us about the machines and stuff. Impress the hell out of us. So it was up to me to slobber and grin like some kind of half-wit over the idea, to perk him up, see? Everybody suffers when the old man gets into one of his moods.

  Of course, like always when I get sucked into this good-turn business, I shaft myself. I’d sort of forgotten how much I don’t like tight places and being closed in. When we were younger, Gene used to make me go berserk by holding me under the covers, or stuffing a pillow in my face, or locking me in the garage whenever he got the chance. The jerk.

  To start with, they packed us in the cage with twelve other people, which didn’t help matters any. Right away my chest got tight and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Then the old cables started groaning and grinding and this fine red dust like chili powder sprinkled down through the mesh and dusted our hard hats with the word GUEST stencilled on them. It was rust. Kind of makes you think.

  “Here we go,” said Pop.

  We went. It was like all of a sudden the floor fell away from under my boots. That cage just dropped in the shaft like a stone down a well. It rattled and creaked and banged. The bare light bulb in the roof started to flicker, and all the faces around me started to dance and shake up and down in the dark. A wind twisted up my pant-legs and I could hear the cables squeak and squeal. It made me think of big fat fucking rats.

  “She needs new brake shoes,” said this guy beside me and he laughed. He couldn’t fool me. He was scared shitless too, in his own way.

  “It’s not the fall that kills you,” his neighbour replied. “It’s the sudden stop.” There’s a couple of horses’ patoots in every crowd.

  We seemed to drop forever. Everybody got quieter and quieter. They even stopped shuffling and coughing. Down. Down. Down. Then the cage started to slow, I felt a pressure build in my knees and my crotch and my ears. The wire box started to shiver and clatter and shake. Bang! We stopped. The cage bobbed a little up and down like a yo-yo on the end of a string. Not much though, just enough to make you queasy.

  “Last stop, Hooterville!” said the guide, who thought he was funny, and threw back the door. Straight ahead I could see a low-roofed big open space with tunnels running from it into the ore. Every once in a while I could see the light from a miner’s helmet jump around in the blackness of one of those tunnels like a firefly flitting in the night.

  First thing I thought was: What if I get lost? What if I lose the group? There’s miles and miles and miles of tunnel under here. I caug
ht a whiff of the air. It didn’t smell like air up top. It smelled used. You could taste the salt. I’m suffocating, I thought. I can’t breathe this shit.

  I hadn’t much liked the cage but this was worse. When I was in the shaft I knew there was a patch of sky over my head with a few stars in it and clouds and stuff. But all of a sudden I realized how deep we were. How we were sort of like worms crawling in the guts of some dead animal. Over us were billions, no, trillions, of tons of rock and dirt and mud pressing down. I could imagine it caving in and falling on me, crushing my chest, squeezing the air out slowly, dust fine as flour trickling into my eyes and nostrils, or mud plugging my mouth so I couldn’t even scream. And then just lying there in the dark, my legs and arms pinned so I couldn’t even twitch them. For a long time maybe. Crazy, lunatic stuff was what I started to think right on the spot.

  My old man gave me a nudge to get out. We were the last.

  “No,” I said quickly and hooked my fingers in the mesh.

  “We get out here,” said the old man. He hadn’t caught on yet.

  “No, I can’t,” I whispered. He must have read the look on my face then. I think he knew he couldn’t have pried me off that mesh with a gooseneck and winch.

  Fred, the cage operator, lifted his eyebrows at Pop. “What’s up, Jack?”

  “The kid’s sick,” said Pop. “We’ll take her up. He don’t feel right.” My old man was awful embarrassed.

  Fred said, “I wondered when it’d happen. Taking kids and women down the hole.”

  “Shut your own goddamn hole,” said the old man. “He’s got the flu. He was up all last night.”

  Fred looked what you’d call sceptical.

  “Last time I take you any place nice,” the old man said under his breath.

  The last day of school has always got to be some big deal. By nine o’clock all the dipsticks are roaring their cars up and down main street with their goofy broads hanging out their windows yelling, and trying to impress on one another how drunk they are.