Drive

by Diana Wieler

  •

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time we pulled up to Kruse Studios. It was an old, renovated two-story house on an artsy street with outdoor cafes.

  Something occurred to me as I cut the engine.

  “Did he give you the money?” I asked. “The two bucks?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  I felt a shot of hope. I hadn’t really understood that part of the document, but if no money had changed hands, maybe the contract was still in effect.

  A small bell sounded when we walked into the front office, but no one came. Down a short hallway, I noticed a red light glowing over the studio door. Kruse was recording someone. I asked Daniel how long this could take.

  “All afternoon, maybe all night,” he shrugged.

  I didn’t have all night. I waited with my hand on the doorknob. When the light went off, I pushed my way in.

  The only illumination in the narrow room was over the control board that ran like a table against the wall, a scramble of knobs and levers and dials. Through a glass window, I saw the attached recording booth, its walls covered by black, bumpy foam. Three musicians were inside — two guys and a girl, with a guitar, a keyboard and saxophone.

  Kruse turned abruptly in his swivel chair. He was a slight, bony man with a stomach over his belt that was surprising on his small frame. He had long, rippled gray-brown hair to his shoulders, but it was mostly gone on the top of his head.

  “Hello, Mr. Kruse, how are you today?” I stuck out my hand but he didn’t take it.

  “Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?”

  I gestured behind me, as best I could. “The door was open. Listen, I know you’re busy so I’ll get right to the point…”

  I heard Daniel step behind me. When Kruse saw him he stood up.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m finished with this guy,” the producer said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Five minutes!” I blurted. “If I could just have five minutes of your valuable time, I’m sure we can sort this out.” I glanced through the booth window at the musicians who were staring at us curiously.

  Kruse looked, too. He was turning a little pink.

  “I know you want to resolve this quickly,” I said in a low voice.

  The producer leaned over the table and flicked on the microphone.

  “I’m sorry. I have to take a few minutes. Help yourself to a coffee.”

  “Does this come off our bill?” one of the men said.

  Kruse herded us into another room off the reception area. Probably his office, it was crowded with a desk and a daybed. Boxes and paperwork were everywhere, piled on top of the filing cabinet as well as stacked up against the wall.

  “You’ve really done a lot with this old house,” I said. “It looks so…professional.”

  Kruse shut the door securely and leaned against it. “Look,” he started, “I don’t know who you are…”

  I had a card ready. “Jens Friesen. Five Star Ford.” A lie now but I needed it. “I’m Daniel’s brother.”

  “Well, he’s driving me crazy,” Kruse said, tossing my card on the desk. “He must phone me four times a day. I’m trying to run a business here. I don’t think he realizes I did him a favor.”

  “He hasn’t done dick,” Daniel said sullenly. I shot him a look, but it was too late.

  “That garbage is what I’m talking about,” Kruse said. “He’s on me about what I’ve done. Do you know how many tapes this kid has sold in three months? Fifteen. That’s a hundred and fifty bucks out of five thousand. I’m the one carrying that money.”

  “You said you knew people,” Daniel argued. “You said you could get me a contract with a label in three months — four, tops.”

  Kruse was getting red in the face. “That’s insane! I never would have said that!”

  “But you did! You said you knew people at Icon and Home Grown…”

  “I do!” Kruse glanced over his shoulder at the door, and his voice dropped. “But even when you have contacts, these things take time.”

  “I don’t think you know anybody,” Daniel said.

  “Why, you ungrateful little snot…” Kruse took a step toward Daniel and it startled me back to life.

  “Mr. Kruse, you’re absolutely right!” I moved between them, blocking his way. “Daniel will drive you crazy. He drives me crazy.”

  The producer stopped short. I think he’d forgotten I was there.

  “I’m sure my parents don’t know how you’ve been badgered,” I hurried on. “They’ll be very upset when they find out. Believe me, our dad will blow a fuse. I don’t think you’ll have this problem anymore.”

  Daniel looked as if I’d hit him. Kruse’s shoulders dipped a bit, relaxing, but then he shifted.

  “What about my money?” he said.

  “I think you’ll see an improvement in that area as well.” I had no idea how.

  “That’s not good enough. I can’t keep carrying this debt. I’m not…equipped.”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth, that my parents were less equipped than he was.

  “Mr. Kruse, you made Daniel a very generous offer,” I said. “You must have felt he had some special quality you wanted to work with.”

  The producer hesitated. “He’s one hot guitarist,” he admitted quietly.

  I tried to control the excitement in my voice. “Now, you’re the one who said these things take time. It’s hardly been four months. Is that an average investment a producer makes in someone they believe has genuine talent?”

  Kruse shook his head ruefully.

  Ask him, Jens. Ask him for more time.

  “So what is the average?” I fumbled. “How long does a professional decide he’s going to invest…”

  “There isn’t a limit,” Kruse said shordy. “Each person is different. But it’s not just the time, it’s the money.”

  “I’m…I’m sure you’ll see an improvement —”

  “When?”

  I scrambled, grasping. “Look, we’re not really talking about five thousand dollars here. That’s the retail value — not what the tapes cost you.” I scooped one off the desk. “What are these things, a buck apiece?”

  I wasn’t trying to insult him. I was trying to determine how much money we were actually talking about. But everything changed.

  “Are you calling me a fraud? Are you saying I’d rip this kid off?”

  I tried to cut in but it was too late. The producer jabbed a finger in Daniel’s direction.

  “He’s not worth it. I wouldn’t waste my time. He’s got no voice and you can teach a goddamn chimp to play the guitar…”

  “Up your ass!” My brother’s hands were curled into fists.

  “Daniel — shut up.”

  “No, he can’t talk to me like that.”

  “I’m not talking to you at all.” Kruse picked up the phone. “My lawyer is. And if you’re not out of here in ten seconds, it’ll be the police.”

  “As if you had the balls, you bullshitter…” Daniel sneered.

  Kruse dropped the receiver and lunged at him. The movement went through me like an electric shock. I only meant to stop him but when I grabbed Kruse I shoved him away hard — metal banged as he hit the filing cabinet. He stayed there, staring at me, frightened. I could feel the blood running through my body.

  “Two weeks,” I said quietly. “The contract says we have two weeks. For two dollars.”

  My brother dug into his pocket and hurriedly laid the money on the desk. He must have had change from the cab.

  “Those are his tapes,” Kruse said, tilting his head toward a large box on the floor. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  I picked it up. It had to be heavy, packed dead solid with hundreds of cassettes, but somehow I didn’t feel the weight.

  “Come on, Daniel,” I said as I went out.

  FOUR

  I drove back to my apartment in a daze. Daniel was silent the whole way. I think he was a little afraid of
me by then, not sure what I’d do next. I was scared, too. I’m not a violent person. I’ve only had two fights in my whole life. I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind of Kruse backed up against the filing cabinet.

  When I pulled into the parking lot I said, “Wait here. I’ll bring your guitar.”

  In my apartment I started pulling clothes out of the drawers and stuffing them into two duffle bags. I didn’t know what I was going to do but I could feel that this part of my life was finished. Halfway through I decided to get changed and stripped off my suit. The way it landed across the bed reminded me of a body, how it would look after they drew a chalk outline around it. I shut off the lights, fast.

  Downstairs in the foyer, I stopped and unwound two keys off my ring, then dropped them into the landlord’s mailbox. I felt the clunk in the pit of my stomach. Seven months ago I’d been so excited to get this apartment, my first place on my own. Delbeggio hadn’t wanted to take me as a tenant because he said the young guys always snuck out in the middle of the night and stiffed him for the rent. I was insulted. I’d told him that I was different, that I had a job and I was going to be somebody he remembered.

  I hurried out of the building, trying not to run.

  Daniel was leaning against the truck, but when he saw all I was carrying he jogged up to meet me and took half into his arms. He looked quizzically at the duffle bags.

  “I have holidays,” I said. “I might go somewhere.”

  We loaded it all into the back. Inside the cab, Daniel turned to me.

  “Jens, what are we going to do? What are we going to tell Dad?”

  My stomach plummeted. He was right – I was in this, too. I’d blundered in and made it legal, forced the money to change hands. And I already had something I didn’t know how to tell my father.

  “We’re not going to say anything yet,” I told Daniel.

  “He’s going to find out, in two weeks for sure…”

  “I know! But maybe…we can think of something. I mean, what if we came up with the money?” I hurried on. “Nobody would have to know, then.”

  Daniel edged across the seat. “Do you have it?”

  The heat came to my face. “No.”

  “Well, do you have some of it?”

  “No! I’ve…had a lot of expenses. Lately. It costs a lot to live on your own. Now, just be quiet. I have to think.”

  I shoulder-checked and pulled into the traffic that led to the highway I knew so well, the road to Ile-des-Sapins. Daniel didn’t say another word but I could feel his hope fill up the cab, suffocating me. It can be terrible when somebody has faith in you.

  •

  I am the Chocolate King of Rosetown Senior High. I am also one of only a handful of people to ever make the Rosetown Raiders football team in their junior year.

  Rosetown is famous for football. For a decade it had dominated the provincial finals and two years before I got there, they’d represented Manitoba at the national championship, which made the town even more stuck-up than it already was, even though the school buses in kids from Ile-des-Sapins, Morden, Floret and a half dozen other places.

  I am not built like a receiver, a runner. I’m built like a defensive end or tackle, solid and square-shouldered, except my legs are too long – my center of gravity isn’t low enough. Coach Doerksen put me in the defensive line anyway and I should have been happy to be there – the grade ten prodigy – but I wasn’t. I play the game to get the ball.

  I didn’t tell Dad that I’d made the team, not right away. He didn’t even watch sports on TV. It seemed to me his life had always been about work.

  I was ten years old when he drove me past the armed forces barracks in Winnipeg, to tell me about his first job. Through the windshield I stared out at the endless rows of bright-green lawns, every square foot of it carted from the truck by my father and two other men, using wheelbarrows.

  “My hands were so blistered and swollen I couldn’t get them into a pair of gloves on the second day,” he said softly beside me. “I cut a canvas bag into strips and wrapped them up like that.” He hesitated. “Use your brain, not your back, Jens. Be something.”

  The first few months of grade ten I was a running fool. I knew my job and I did it, charged like a bull into the oncoming line. But every practice, every warm-up I was out to prove something, running until I thought my lungs would burst, skipping through the obstacle tires like a highland dancer. If there was an errand, I was ready. I wanted Coach Doerksen to notice me, to know my face.

  “You brown nose, Friesen,” Connel Tameran sneered. “You should stick your head up your own ass, just for the change.”

  I didn’t care. We won our first four out of five games and I was early to all of them. In warm-up laps I beat myself to stay on the heels of the fastest guys. I hadn’t been born a wide receiver but I was sure I could earn it. If I just kept trying and didn’t give up.

  At the beginning of October we started fundraising. Everybody groaned when Doerksen started pulling out cartons of chocolate-covered almonds. There were twenty-four boxes in each, at three dollars apiece.

  “I expect each of you to sell at least one carton,” Doerksen said. “Get your parents to take them to the office. Anybody who can’t sell one carton of these things isn’t really trying.”

  The cardboard handle dug into my fingers as I carried it home. I’d never sold anything before but I wanted to be the first one to put that money in Doerksen’s hand.

  “Use your brain, Jens,” I told myself.

  I started in Morris, because nobody in that town was on the team – no competition. And I learned fast that even if you were nervous, you could smile at people, and they’d smile back. My little speech got better every time, but I listened to people, too. When a man told me his son had played for the Raiders the year they went to the championship, I asked for his name. At each house after that, I introduced the Raiders as “the team Gary Frechette used to play for.”

  It was magic. By the time I was halfway down the second side of the first street, my carton was empty and the money was a thick, doubled-over wad. I walked out to the highway again, the prairie night clean and crisp and studded with stars.

  This is something, I told the sky.

  The next day I turned in the money – the first one – and I took two more cartons. I sold between two and three cartons a night, every night after that, in towns that reached to the edge of Winnipeg. When the blitz was over, I’d sold fifty-one cartons – 1,224 boxes of chocolate-covered almonds at three dollars each. And when Connel Tameran blew out the ligaments in his knee near the end of the season, Ronnie Lews got bumped up to running back and Jens Friesen became a wide receiver for the Rosetown Raiders. I didn’t score a single touchdown but I was happy to get the ball.

  I finally told Dad that I was playing, and he came out to watch me when he could. Some parents are screamers, but my father never said a word. He wouldn’t even sit down. He stood in the aisle with his hands in his pockets, and on the drive home he’d let me talk. Yet the sight of him up in the stands was all the cheering I needed.

  In grade eleven, I was a receiver from day one. But I never slacked off. I went into every practice, every game as if I was still trying to win my position. It made a difference. I was more agile than the goons coming at me and I could run like the north wind. Rosetown became known as a passing team, and a lot of the time they were passing to me.

  In that October’s fundraising blitz I sold eighty-nine cartons of chocolate-covered almonds. And that’s when I met Jack Lahanni.

  It was right after a practice. I was trooping into the school to shower, the heat and smell of that hour beaming off me like radiation, and I heard, “That’s him. That’s the one. Jens!”

  I turned. Coach Doerksen is over six feet tall, but he seemed dwarfed by the man who stood beside him. I knew who it was. I almost stumbled as I walked up.

  “Jens, this is Jack Lahanni. I was telling him about you,” Doerksen said.

  My head w
as spinning. Was I being scouted?

  The big man thrust out his hand and shook mine, the Grey Cup ring like a brilliant golf ball. My finger brushed it in the grip.

  “I hear you’re quite a salesman,” Jack Lahanni said.

  “I try,” I said, my mind still trying to take in that he was here, that he was speaking to me.

  “He holds the record,” Doerksen said quickly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s sold more of those damn chocolates than anyone in the history of the school, maybe the province. But he’s like that. Keeps going and…”

  “I saw that,” Jack Lahanni said, smiling at me. “If you died on that field you wouldn’t have the sense to lie down.”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t – I promise,” I blurted.

  Jack Lahanni laughed, a deep, encouraging rumble. He turned toward the school parking lot and began to amble slowly. I was already taller than my father but I still couldn’t match his stride.

  We didn’t talk about football. He asked me what I was going to do once I finished school. I was a math and science major, making decent marks, but I really didn’t know. Dad had been talking about university but that didn’t seem…big enough. I wanted to be something.

  “So, tell me, Jens,” Jack said finally. “The day’s done at 3:30, your friends go home and you’re out there running your ass off for another hour. Why? What’s so important?”

  The only thing that came to my mind was the truth.

  “I want the ball,” I said. “Every time, every play. I can’t help it. All I want is to get the ball.”

  Jack stopped abruptly, his eyes glittering like the huge ring on his hand.

  “That,” he said, “is drive. And I don’t know why some people have it and others don’t. You can teach people just about anything, but you can’t make them want something. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  He nodded toward the field.

  “Drive is the most important thing you take out there, Jens. And you know what? It works in other places, too. Pointed in the right direction, it could make you a lot of money.” For the first time I saw the silver car in the parking lot, glinting chrome and steel. Drive had made Jack Lahanni a lot of money.