All of this seems easier than the truth.
* * *
Major David tells the skinny waitress he has been waiting a shockingly uncongenial amount of time.
Iris says she’s sorry.
He says he would not want to have to bring this up with management.
Sorry, sir, she says.
He says she should consider adjusting her attitude.
So sorry, sir, she says again.
Goddamn it on these young ones and their sirs and sorrys.
The skinny waitress retreats.
She is a bit of a muppet but most of them can’t be bothered to comb out their hair these days. At least she’s wearing a dress. Major David fondly remembers fitted skirts covered in colourful flowers. Before terse white collared blouses and straight black pants. Before militant-looking short hair and brazen bangs. Before he was the Mayor. Before the papers started calling him Major David. It had seemed a flattering moniker at first. He had fucked Diane like a hardened soldier the first time he read it in print. In charge of a great campaign. He had went at his wife with a conqueror’s cock.
But the bastard journalists have turned it on him.
The woman in HR informs him, whenever given the chance, that his brand has been tarnished. That he desperately needs to resuscitate it. Otherwise, his time in public office is dead in the water. She casually lobs demise analogies in his face to spite him.
He calls her JoannA to vex her.
He drags out the last bit for emphasis. He hits that non-existent A because it is a non-existent A he can hit. You are no Joe. He needs her to know her name is not even pertinent enough for him to remember. And HR glares at him each time he pulls a mispronounce but she underestimates how he has grown used to stink eyes.
His days are full of mean looks from women he can’t stand and shouldn’t have to deal with.
But they’re in the workforce now so he supposes he’s stuck with them. He once made the mistake of mentioning this to a young clerk. HR had dressed buddy down for being late two days in a row even though he had said plainly enough he had all three kids while his wife was away. HR reminded him that she always had her kid and still arrived ten minutes early each morning.
Single mothers are terrible women to deal with at work.
Major David leaned in to lessen the poor fucker’s embarrassment. He conveyed his sympathy for the dark-haired fellow and implied that the ladies were here now regardless of want. Gave the young feller a wink. Felt good. A little showcase of mentorship.
Then returned to his office to google the noises coming out of the washing machine.
It sounded ready to orbit into space when the spin cycle was spin cycling. Diane insisted they replace it for fear it would explode. But they couldn’t merely replace it. Diane thought it was a good opportunity to redo the laundry room. Major David could not for the life of him understand why this was important. Better to redo the curb. Or add an additional bathroom.
Diane sighed they didn’t need more bathrooms than people.
He should have known better than to trust that Chinaman. Or Korean. Aboriginal maybe. It was really hard to tell. People could be from anywhere. There was a time when being a Protestant from some distant lousy bay was the worst thing Major David could think of but not now. Women came from everywhere now. The young fellows met them in post-secondary where they were studying engineering or medicine or getting a doctorate in some nonsense.
Human dynamics. Sociology. Fucking linguistics.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Major David was trying to be congenial. He didn’t even say anything that bad. It was not like he had been sexual. Buddy didn’t need to tattle on him to HR. And she wrote that down, too. She writes everything down.
Nothing worse than a woman who writes everything down.
HR is a virus infecting the female staff while they pee and fix their faces. Feminism, Lord in heaven, Major David can’t even get a cup of coffee without her nattering on about some infraction against her person. The coffeemaker is an affront to her. She goes on regular tirades about it. It is not environmentally friendly to utilize individual plastic pods to brew one cup of coffee.
She goes on and on and on all the time about mass fish decline and ecosystem destruction as if he is somehow personally responsible for the extinction of bluefin tuna.
There is no point attempting to reason with women like HR. They really need sorting out on a nightly basis.
Out of frustration for her existence and in an effort to finish it with her, Major David once said he did not invent the coffeemaker, while biting into a honey cruller.
You know, JoannA, that I did not invent the Keurig, right? Though I wish I had.
And off she went pontificating about the coffin-maker not committing the crime.
Major David chewed down slowly while peering over her shoulder for an exit. Had there not been a number of junior staffers in the kitchenette that day, he would have just walked away from her. Just stop listening was a tactic he regularly employed. He left conversations with his wife and daughters all the time. It was a vagina-proof strategy.
The coffin-maker, HR bleated, chose to use the nails. He chose that and is therefore implicated in the act of nailing the coffin lid no matter the number of times he claims to not be ultimately responsible for the death. He creates a demand.
You, HR said, while fingering him and then the coffeemaker and then him and then the coffeemaker, darting to and fro as she sputtered you and that, you, she said, chose to create a demand for that and that causes waste and that waste kills fish so you, you kill fish and that kills the planet so you kill the planet.
Major David shrugged and reached for another doughnut, thinking, women are crazy.
HR was then off saying that compartmentalizing is so typical for a man his age.
Each word is candy coated in arsenic. She litters the boardroom, reception area and copy station, each and every adult conversation, with a poisonous for a man your age in case he forgets when he was born with a penis a long time ago.
She thinks he’s a stupid old man.
She sometimes says as much in her level voice so as to keep inside the realm of congeniality, and he plots ways to make her lose her cool. He thinks of devil’s advocate pro-life arguments. Once, just before sleep, he had revised an ingenious counter-argument for sweatshops. He was not particularly for sweatshops or child labour or anything quite so sinister but he knew it would provoke volume out of her.
One day out of mounting frustration, he asked if she thought herself smarter than he.
You think you’re smarter than me?
He had been nearing rage as they argued over walkable cities. Pedestrian-only streets. Old people should ride the bus for free. Affordable housing. Clean energy. Wind farms. On and on and on she goes, where she stops . . . she never stops.
The rasp of her Scandinavia-loving pitch crawled in behind his sockets through deep holes drilled into the sides of his temples.
She pained him. He couldn’t believe the nerve of her. He wished he could call her father. He wished he could give her the belt himself.
The curl of HR’s lip seemed to imply that he did everything wrong.
He had not been prepared for HR’s answer to his question. He was so struck down by it, in fact, that for moments between the question and the answer and the thereafter, he thought he was having an existential crisis.
Why wouldn’t I be smarter than you?
And she had laughed at him.
Why would you assume yourself smarter than me?
Shook her head
and laughed. Sighed. Good grief, David, she said and walked away.
He wanted to lay hands on her that day.
Would you prefer to move to a larger table at the back, sir?
The skinny waitress is lucky he doesn’t tear a strip off her. Of course, he would prefer a better table! He has been saying that this whole jesus time. God damn it!
He doesn’t know why young women are so determined to work. They don’t seem at all good at working.
* * *
Calv still got Donna so he tries not to think on what life would be like if he never.
Because that might be he’s future if he can’t shake himself clear of Roger. And Roger’s some wound up today. Says he spent yesterday’s storm trapped in the house with no power and nothing to look at. Had to try reading a book to occupy his mind and Roger is right poisoned over it. He got to get the stink of house off, he says. Woman stink, Roger calls it.
Susie never liked Roger either. She thinks there’s something wrong with him.
She don’t understand why he can’t leave her daughter alone because he for sure don’t actually like her. Roger don’t want Amanda to be herself at all which is some awful confusing cause he carries on like someone obsessed with her when really he wishes all them parts of Amanda weren’t her parts.
And he’s already lashing into Amanda before Calv has figured out where he wants to eat. He’s mid-sentence. Amanda was on a public service announcement or YouTube video or some such thing speaking out against sexual assault. Roger says Amanda exaggerates.
I only ever wanted to be nice to her, stuck-up bitch.
And Calv, even though he don’t want to get into it today, suggests Roger shut up calling Amanda names.
She’s still me fucking sister, ain’t she?
Not that Calv sees her that much lately. No. She’s beyond done, she said. Done was where she was ten years ago. She is ten years beyond that now. Amanda makes sure there’s absolute certainty in what she’s after saying. She’s learned to be clear like this to establish boundaries.
Amanda spells things out outlandishly now so there is not even the potential for misunderstanding. She has been taught over her whole life that attempting to spare a man’s feelings will get you outright ignored. Roger, for example, will take anything other than a threat to call the police as encouragement to wail at her.
Look at what you’ve done to me, Mandy, he will bawl if given an opportunity, I’ve lost me mind.
This is the kind of simplistic bullshit Roger fires at her whenever she is in-between boyfriends. Amanda was regularly furiously texting Calv to tell that fucking maniac to get off her landing or she would call the police and have him thrown in lock-up.
What will they say at home if I has your buddy thrown in jail?
Roger carries Amanda’s grade ten picture around in his wallet. This is enough to creep her right the fuck out. She wonders how many photos of her he has saved to his phone. And Calv says, go on, go on, he’s just got a thing for you.
This thing Roger has for Amanda makes her cry at Sunday dinner.
They never even really used to have each other, Susie says to Calv in disbelief.
Calv tells their mother not to worry because Amanda can handle herself.
You expects your sister to handle all the men, Susie screeches through the phone. Why can’t you help her handle ’em?
I got me own stuff to look after sure, don’t I?
She’s the only sister you got.
I knows how many sisters I got, Mom, please.
Amanda been always looked after you even ’fore you was born.
But Calv is too fucked to worry about Amanda.
He has to go make more money than is honest so he can take Donna to see Meat Loaf.
The woman’s favourite band is Meat Loaf, Amanda snarls in the direction of anyone at all.
Amanda hates that “Dashboard Light” song. She likes dashboard songs by better artists. She cannot even believe Calv’s musical taste. Which is not really true because she can believe it. She can totally believe he still listens to that same shit from high school because it would be harder for him to figure out what the fuck he actually likes. Meat Loaf appeals to the tiny ritualistic side of his nature. Calv’s girlfriends in high school believed that wearing identical socks would rebuild some gone forgotten tribe. Conformity and repetition makes Amanda innately suspicious. Not Calv though.
Calvin always sniffs his deodorant before rolling it onto his armpit.
He is every time delightfully surprised to find the pleasant manly scent in a tube of roll-on and certain he would smell unnaturally feminine if he were not persistent. He keeps his pit stick on the dresser in the spare bedroom with his other things. Donna doesn’t like how he insists on always being able to see his toiletries spread out across a surface. He tries to explain to her how taking a quick visual inventory regularly reassures him. But Donna chalks it up to some poor outport fetish toward display.
And honestly, there is something to what she says.
Calv has often wondered why he wants everything out on the front yard. He hates stuff being out of sight behind cupboard doors. Even the dishes in the kitchen. He argued that open concept would be more efficient in the morning when reaching for a mug or bowl. But Donna was not into it. Donna said the kitchen would never feel clean and she would all the time be trying to make them tidy on the shelf. She accused Calv of being too lazy to close a cabinet door after bumping her temple the umpteenth time and cussed him out. Still, he tried to talk her around.
You’re not taking the cupboard doors off, Calv, just fucking forget it.
There are a lot of things in the house that Calv can just fucking forget.
Calv couldn’t help what he liked and what he liked was seeing everything. He has a serious urge to hang everything up on hooks on the front step, socks, caps, his tool belt. Calv would spread he’s clothes out over the bed, exhibit every bought thing to prove that he works hard and can afford stuff. He understands the campers in pits along the highway, loads of heavy equipment right in the community, cardboard signs on land squealing a surname in cheap orange spray paint.
Amanda hardly got any stuff at all.
Calv don’t understand what she spends her money on. Concerts and trips. Nothing to show for it except a few pictures. Not even very many cause Amanda hardly ever takes pictures, gets right annoyed with Donna who wants a picture of every outfit anyone wears for the Instagram. They will racket on Thanksgiving cause Donna is taking too many photos of potato salad. Amanda thinks everything about Donna is in poor taste. Roger, too.
Roger turns her guts.
And he’s after turning sour since finally parking the truck. Roger hates it, hates it with a passion, when Calv tries to be better than him. He takes it as an affront and gets defensive when Calv talks about quitting smoking or joining a ball hockey league. Roger puts the fix in and quick when Calv gets any mighty ideas about self-improvement. Reminds him that they are the same kind of man, have always been and will always be no matter what happens. No matter what. Roger and Calv have always been like brothers but they’s closer than brothers now.
Roger knows none of the women folk wants Calv going around with him.
Calv should never mind picking up for that jesus sister of his. It’s not like she’s gonna stand by him when she finds out what they’re getting into. No. Calv only got Roger now and they both knows it.
Roger is going on about how he hates St. John’s.
He wouldn’t live here if he could convince everyone to move back home. Then he wouldn’t have to find something fi
t to eat for lunch on a fucking Tuesday. He would eat whatever his mother had cooked. Macaroni stew with chicken hearts and a bit of bread probably. He would have had Amanda knocked up by now if there wouldn’t all these styled-up come from aways sniffing around her skirts.
Roger blames it on cable.
No one even knew what was out there till they all got the cable. Now, there is nothing but dissatisfaction. Lord Jesus, Roger is dissatisfied and he’s going to have to go offshore soon so he’s not ready to waste this whole day being miserable. He’s got Calv out of the house now, might as well make a go of it.
Few drinks will straighten them right up.
* * *
Major David asks the skinny one if this is the staff-favourite table.
There is a slight lift in her eyebrow. He catches sight of it before she can adjust. She doesn’t like him. It’s perceptible. That, or she’s on her period. Probably both. He’s heard that the serving staff, being primarily female, get synced up. He would like to see a study on that. Major David has heard they have periods for weeks now because of the new contraceptives. He’s convinced, convinced, that all the estrogen they piss out into the harbour is why there are more homosexuals. When he was a young man there was hardly a queer in Newfoundland, and now they’re everywhere. The fellow wiping the glassware for example. Gay. Those mannerisms. That haircut. Gay gay gay.
He don’t mind gay people now, he just wishes they didn’t all look so fit.
Diane watches the decorating shows in the evening and now he can’t find a bag of chips or nary a cookie in the cupboards anywhere.
A granola bar is not a cookie.
Nothing like a cookie. Would be called a cookie if it were a cookie. But it’s not. It’s a granola bar. The cupboards are full of kid food again. Just like how the house is full of kids. Kids he didn’t even make. He loves his grandchildren. They’re his grandchildren so he loves them. But they’re really very loud and dirty. They’re stickier than he remembers children being.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Page 15
