by Diana Wieler
The words stopped him, shook the wild energy out of him. Now he just glared at me.
My heart was pounding. I was more afraid to go home than he was. “Those are your choices,” I said.
Finally he looked away. “That’s my guitar,” he said to the window.
I eased the truck into gear, relieved.
“We’ll get it back. I promise.”
He didn’t say another word, but sat clutching the fedora, curling up the battered brim all the way to Winnipeg.
I knew where I was going. I’d driven past the place enough times, a few blocks off the city’s main street. Mickey’s was probably the biggest pawn shop in Winnipeg; the sign painted on the side of the building said they even took cars and snowmobiles. Still, it was on a street that had been fading for fifty years, across from the Salvation Army Thrift Store and a place that cashed cheques.
I parked in the back. I didn’t wait for Daniel but opened the hatch and found the right case. I was on the sidewalk in front of the building when he appeared beside me.
Through the first door and up the stairs, we were stopped by metal bars. I rattled them.
“Just a minute,” a woman’s voice cried out. There was a harsh buzzing and I pushed through the security gate.
The place was big, a two-story warehouse packed full, and I knew I wasn’t seeing all of it. Against one wall were washers and dryers, TVs and VCRs. On the floor were revolving racks of video cassettes and CDs, and there was a huge glass counter of gold and diamond rings. They were set carefully into displays but didn’t glitter, somehow. The first shine had already rubbed off.
I didn’t see any musical instruments, but I knew there was a second floor.
A woman of about forty was sitting behind the counter, her generous hips balanced on a small stool, brassy red hair to her shoulders.
“Can I help you guys?”
Daniel hung behind me like a shadow.
I stuck out my free hand to shake hers. “Hi! How are you today?”
She looked amused. “Pretty good. What about you?”
“I’ve been better. Nobody comes here when things are great, right?”
She eyed the case I was holding. “That’s the song. What do you have to show me?”
“Something to make your day,” I said, setting it on the counter. I opened the case with a flourish and lifted it up by the neck, trying to get the overhead light to flash on the pearl front plate. “That’s a Fender Stratocaster.”
“I can read,” she said, her eyes running appraisingly over the guitar. “Is it yours?”
“It’s mine. I won it,” Daniel said. He’d already drifted away to the rack of CDs, as if he didn’t want to stand close to us.
She glanced from me to him. “Are either of you boys eighteen?”
“Me,” I said.
“Got I.D.?”
“Driver’s license” I said, reaching for my wallet.
“Then it’s his guitar,” she told Daniel. His face seemed to tighten.
“How much do you want?” she said to me.
I leaned my Rosetown Raiders’ body against the counter toward her and grinned.
“A million bucks?”
She grinned back. “A hundred and fifty.”
“I was hoping for more…” I said with my best disappointed sigh. She glanced over the guitar again.
“Two hundred, but that’s the top. I’ve got a lot of guitars.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you nuts?!” Daniel flew out from behind the CDs. “That’s a Fender, an American Fender. It’s worth a thousand dollars, if not more.”
“Daniel, we’re pawning it, not selling it.”
“This is the best guitar that will ever come in here,” he said, shutting the case. “Two hundred bucks is a joke. An insult. I’m sick.” He tried to lift it off the counter. My hand came down on his arm.
“I want to talk to you,” I growled. But the redhead leaned back and yelled up the staircase. “Bill-ee! I need you to come and look at this!”
I couldn’t tell how old Billy was. Like the street, he’d been fading for a long time. The stubble over his chin was salt-and-pepper gray but his hair, combed back and actually oiled, was black. He had knotted, sinewy arms like Daniel, but sunken cheeks buffed with high color, like Sy. A drinker’s face.
It lit up when he opened the case. He looked at Daniel, his lips parted, pulling back in a smile.
“Yeah?” he said softly.
“Yeah,” Daniel agreed. Billy lifted the guitar tenderly out of the case and positioned his foot on a chair to balance the pearl-plated body over his thigh. He plucked softly, expertly at the strings. The dull sound meant nothing to me; an electric guitar unplugged is a dead thing. But he seemed to be listening to something else.
“You’re one shit-hot guitar man if this is yours,” Billy said to Daniel. “Rock ’n’ roll?”
“Blues,” my brother said proudly.
Billy plucked a little riff, a series of notes that struck a chord even in my memory, from one of Daniel’s tapes.
My brother’s face was shining. “Basin Street.”
“How much, Billy?” the woman interrupted.
“Oh…” The man sighed, as if the money was a painful thought. “Three fifty…seventy-five. Yeah, make it three seventy-five. Give him too much to come back.”
The woman pulled out a pawn slip. “It’s five percent for thirty days, plus a holding fee. Press hard. You’re making three copies.”
While I filled out the slip, she wrote on a smaller green form, glancing up at me from time to time. I realized she was writing down a description of me.
“Police ticket.” she explained, “It’s the law. Everything that goes through pawn goes to the police.”
I felt a flush of heat, a reminder that tomorrow was Sunday and after that was Monday and I still didn’t know exactly what I was going to do about the truck. I wanted to be out of this place.
Billy was counting out the money to Daniel. “Be back in a month, guitar man, or I’ll buy it. She’ll be my baby,” he said.
Daniel folded the money over without looking at it and stuffed it into his back pocket. He was smiling at the stringy, oiled guy like he was a friend.
“I thought I was your baby,” the woman said to Billy, running her hand slowly up his arm, teasing but not. He looked at her the way he’d looked at the guitar, eyes that could bend metal with their heat.
I felt like cardboard.
“Let’s go,” I barked at Daniel. I tried to stride away but got stopped by the security gate; they had to buzz me out.
Walking to the truck, I did mental math. I’d always been good at it and sometimes I used it as a distraction if I was worried or bored. Standing on the lot of Five Star Ford, I’d figured out my commission on every vehicle there, based on the sticker price, at least once. Today, though, the work was for real.
“Okay, five percent of 375 is about nineteen bucks, plus the holding fee means that we’ll have to pay around 410 to get the Fender back. Now, if we’re selling the tapes for 7.95…”
“They’re supposed to be ten dollars,” Daniel cut in.
“We have to move these things. It’s a price point — everybody wants a deal. I mean, maybe we’ll start at ten but we’ll go to eight, get it? Now, to pay off the guitar, it’s about 50 tapes…51 actually. What do you owe Kruse? 4,850? Eight into forty-eight, that’s…six…sixty.”
The numbers seemed to hit me like a real thing, a tackle at 45 degrees, helmet blasting my ribs.
“That’s over seven hundred tapes,” I said softly. It was a lot, maybe even more than we had. I’d known this was going to be tough but to see that number chiseled in my mind made it huge, impossible. I didn’t know how I’d do this in a month, never mind a week.
“We’ll try for ten bucks,” I whispered. I cleared my throat and said it louder. “We’re really going to try for ten.”
We were at the truck. I unlocked the passenger side, then hel
d out my hand.
“I’ll hang onto the money,” I said.
Daniel took a step back. “No.”
I let go a short, irritated breath. “Don’t do this now, okay? Just hand it over.”
“No, I won’t.” His eyes were like dark, wet stones. “If you need it, you ask me. I’ll give it to you.”
The thought of my brother doling out money to me made me physically ill. “You’re not going to walk around with four hundred bucks…”
“Yes, I am! Because you don’t care. It’s just money to you. It’s my guitar.”
The frustration seemed to burst in my chest, more than I knew was there. “I am so sick of hearing that. Will you get over it, already? The goddamn thing is gone, you’re in shit up to your eyeballs, so let’s just get on with it. Give me the money!”
I seized his arm to let him know I meant it, but I must have gripped him hard.
“Come on, hit me, Jens.”
“Oh, shut up.” I grabbed his jacket front with my other hand, to make him look at me.
“You want to be the big man? So do it.”
“Daniel…”
“Hit me!”
The burning rush of strength was scaring me. I could have lifted him off the ground like a rag doll. I pushed him away.
Across the street at the bus stop, people were staring. I stalked around to the driver’s door but before I opened it, I pointed at him.
“I have never hit you.” My hand quivered. “I never will.”
His nose was running, fear or fury or both.
“Wipe your face,” I said, and swung into the truck.
He got in, rubbing his sleeve across his upper lip. I pulled my provincial road map out from behind the visor and tossed it at him.
“You want to call the shots? Go ahead. You figure out where we go, what we do. I don’t care.”
I fired up the engine and sat, waiting, staring straight ahead like a chauffeur. Daniel opened the map that seemed to fill the whole cab, crackling and rustling until I thought I would scream. But I didn’t say a word.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s get on Highway 51. We’ll hit Starling first, do that tonight. It’s on the way to Easton.”
EIGHT
“Sales is about numbers,” Sy had told me. “Ten prospects will get you one test-drive. Ten drives will get you one sale. The smart salesman says thank you to the customer who says no, because then he’s one step closer to his next commission.”
I had just started at Five Star Ford and this was part of my training. I wrote it down because I wrote down everything Sy said.
He looked out the window. “You can’t take rejection personally. It’s not about you. You’re not asking the customer if he wants you.”
Later I found out that he always gave the same speech to trainees; it was a song everybody knew the words to. Dave and I would practice late into the evening, the table cluttered with empties, the barroom blurred around the edges.
“Thank you – you stupid prick.”
“No, no! Thank you, asswipe, for walking onto this lot and jerking me around…”
“Because your own life is so screwed…”
“You’ve got nobody to piss on but salesmen!”
We’d laugh till we almost cried.
When I made my first sale, we went to the same bar. Even late in the day I could still hardly believe it. I kept living it over and over, from the touchdown moment of Yes, to the golden flow that swept me through the paperwork and financing, to the final handshake that felt like the grip of a friend. Offer accepted. The money seemed like a bonus.
It wasn’t enough to send home, but it was enough to celebrate with. I bought drinks for everybody. I tried to buy a drink for the waitress but she was on duty. After last call she came back to us – me and Dave and a few friends I’d made over the evening.
“Which one of you won the lottery?” she teased, and the warm weight of her as she settled on my knee felt like a prize. They were turning the lights out around us but we owned that table somehow. I was swimming in perfume and beer, that Yes handshake still tingling in my strong arm. Dave lifted his glass to me one more time.
“I knew you’d make it, you pushy S.O.B.,” he said cheerfully. “Now you’ve got the taste in your mouth. You’ll be all right.”
And in that moment I understood why I was there, instead of unloading trailers or any other job. Because it wasn’t about numbers. It was personal. I clinked Dave’s mug with mine.
“I’ll be all right now,” I said.
•
I pushed the speed limit all the way to Starling. There was no snow on this side of Winnipeg, either, except in the darkest shadows. The day that had started out pale and warm grew hot inside the truck. I squirmed out of my jacket and got stuck halfway, shaking and shaking my right sleeve that wouldn’t come off. Finally Daniel grabbed the cuff and pulled, and I almost shuddered with relief.
“Thanks,” I said gruffly, even though I wasn’t speaking to him.
I was trying to figure out what radio station would bug him the most. My brother has an almost physical reaction to music – sixties soda pop rock can raise goosebumps on his arms, like nails on a blackboard does to other people. I have seen him become queasy in elevators and stores because of the synthesized music. I’d say it was an act, just one more thing he does to be strange, to drive me crazy, but I’ve seen it my whole life. When he was three, the TV commercial for a certain burger chain – with a dancing bear and a deep, bouncing tuba – would send him running from the room with his hands over his ears. And that was when some people still thought he was deaf.
The truck had a cassette deck but the only tape I had was Daniel’s demo that he’d given me at Christmas. I’d never played it. My excuse was that I’d heard most of the eight songs – relentlessly — up through the damned vent in my room. My Christmas present was still in the glove box where I’d stuffed it, face down.
We were almost at Starling but I was watching the countryside, counting farms and wondering if anybody drove into town on a Saturday afternoon. Daniel was slumped against his door, beaten by the sappy love-song station I’d finally picked. When we got to the town limits he sat up and unrolled the window, as if he was gulping air.
Starling wasn’t as big as Ile-des-Sapins. Main Street was the Street, a handful of stores strung up both sides of the highway: a farm implement dealer, a hardware, a bank, the Times Change Cafe (featuring twelve kinds of pie), Darcy’s Secondhand Fashions and a tiny Legion Hall. I had my own ideas about where to try, but I kept my mouth shut and drove slowly past the angled-in trucks and the few pedestrians sauntering along in the sun. No one even looked at us. Starling was built on the highway – all cars were strange cars.
We were nearly at the end of main street when Daniel turned to me.
“Here?” he said.
“Sure.” I swung into the first free spot, in front of Darcy’s and across from the Legion. I pulled out the keys and sat there, hands on my thighs.
Daniel glanced in the sideview mirror. “Maybe we should try the Legion? It’s Saturday night. People will go there to drink. Maybe we should try to set something up?”
“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t move. Daniel waited, watching me, then began to fidget.
“What do you think, Jens?”
“I told you – sure. Go for it.”
He finally yanked on the door handle and pushed his way out. I followed, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
Legion Halls are not night clubs, or even bars. They may have other uses but in rural Manitoba they were built so ex-servicemen would have somewhere to get drunk as cheaply as possible. As private clubs, they don’t serve the general public. There hasn’t been a war in awhile, so most of the people who go to a Legion are pretty old.
Daniel was waiting for me outside the door. I gestured him in ahead, making him go first. After the brilliant sunshine of the street, the dim room struck me blind and for moments I just stood,
blinking, unable to move in case I bumped into something.
The tail end of a conversation seemed to float out to me in the darkness.
“He’s eighty-five years old, for God’s sake. We have to do something — streamers, a cake?”
When my eyes adjusted, I saw about fifteen small round tables squeezed into one half of the room. The other half was dominated by a snooker table, a beautiful old giant in green felt and burnished wood. The fake panneled walls were hung with pictures, rows and rows of young soldiers. In the corner was a bar with a padded vinyl edge – bright orange-red, a color that somebody had gotten a deal on, for sure.
Three people were huddled at the bar — two men and a woman — staring at us. The Legion wasn’t open yet. We wouldn’t have been welcome even if it was.
“Can I help you, boys?” the woman behind the bar said. She was younger than the men, but her husky frame and short haircut reminded me of every mom who came out to cheer at a Rosetown Raiders game, or volunteered at the canteen.
Daniel glanced back at me expectantly. I smiled and said nothing. That’s when he realized I wasn’t going to take over, that he’d have to speak for himself. He looked at the woman, then back at me, lips parted in alarm.
“What do you boys want?” It was a demand but I could hear the fear in her voice. Was this a robbery? One of the men stood up, the larger one, a gray-dusted farmer with lined, leather skin and big shoulders.
“This is a private club,” he said. “You have to leave.”
“Do…do you ever have entertainment?” Daniel said in a breathy voice, as if he was squeezing the words out. “I mean, like, performers?”
“No.” The farmer was looking at me. I was bigger and obviously more dangerous.
“Well, would you want to sometime? Like… tonight?”
“No,” the farmer said. “Why would we?”
Daniel was rocking nervously, even as he clung to his ground.
“I’m a guitarist. Blues. I do shows and things, and I have a tape.” He stuck his hands in his pockets defiantly. “I’m pretty good.”
“I’m sure you are,” the mother in the group said. “But we already have something planned for tonight. Sorry.” She smiled, to soften it.
