“What a guy,” thought Maurice, and his eyes grew a bit watery as he realized such compassion in his own family tree.
“What are we gonna do?” Billy asked from the jukebox.
“For one thing,” Pike said, “we can stop playing ‘All My Ex’s Live in Texas.’ That’d be a start. I’m so sick of that song I hear it in my sleep.”
“Too bad Prissy didn’t live there,” said Booster.
“Naw,” Maurice said. “Don’t wish that on Texas. They already got enough scorpions out there.”
“I ask this again,” Billy said impatiently as he selected his last song. “What are we gonna do?”
“There ain’t much we can do if Prissy gets the Holy Rollers up in arms,” said Maurice. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You know that bunch. They tend to drink in barns and bedroom closets. They’d sign her petition.”
“There has to be a plan,” Billy insisted. “This is right up there with your basic taxation-without-representation shit. This ain’t no democracy if a bunch of women can tell a man whether he can or can’t have a drink.”
“I ain’t been open but six months,” Maurice said mournfully. He poured himself a frosty shot of Yukon Jack, and then gave a free round to the small gathering that clung to the lucky shape of the horseshoe bar. The men were stern and silent, as they must have been at the signing of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, at some Super Bowl where they had bet a fiver on what appeared to be the losing team.
“Never you mind,” Billy said. “We’ll think of something. I’ve dealt with women who could make Prissy Monihan look like Mother Teresa. My license plate don’t say The Kid for nothing.”
“That lobster we got on our license plates nowadays spoils the looks of it,” Ronny said. “The way its claws stick up, it looks like your plate says The Pid.”
“Speaking of one of them women you just mentioned,” Pike said to Billy, “Rita’s been calling all over town for you. She called my house alone five or six times. She’s driving Lynn crazy.”
“You’re driving Lynn crazy,” Billy replied. “Which reminds me. What are you doing here?”
“I heard a Michelob calling my name,” Pike said, and smiled his wide Gifford smile.
“I heard that you quit drinking,” Booster Mullins said. The women of Mattagash might demand social restrictions, depending on one’s family name, but the sad cabal that gathered at The Crossroads was of one brotherhood, and now that brotherhood itself was in danger of being disbanded, their rituals scattered, their magic destroyed.
“Yeah?” Ronny said to Pike. “Didn’t you quit drinking?”
“I did quit,” Pike answered, “but then I reapplied and got my old job back.”
“You’re a hoot,” said Billy. “Lynn ought never to have took you back in the first place.”
“Wait till Rita catches up with you,” Pike said. “She’s wanting money, but I figure she’ll settle for a few front teeth.”
“I’m like that gingerbread man we read about as kids,” said Billy. “I rolled away from a whole bunch of people, including the man at the bank, and I can roll away from Rita, too.” He dug another quarter off the bar and headed back to the jukebox. “And I still got all my teeth.”
“Maybe,” said Pike, and winked at the others. “But if I were you, Mr. Gingerbread Man, I’d be afraid of Rita taking a great big bite out of me.”
“From between the legs,” said Ronny Plunkett. He turned to survey the group of giggling girls from St. Leonard who had just filed in the door. Jailbait, Ronny suspected, and none he knew by name. He watched as they brushed fresh snowflakes from their hair and shoulders.
“Hey!” Ronny shouted. “It snowing out?”
“What’s it look like?” the tallest girl, obviously the leader, said sharply. The others giggled.
“Maybe that’s dandruff,” Ronny answered them, and now it was time for his group, his compadres, those old soldiers of the barroom, those sheets in a snowy wind, to back him up with a splash of warm laughter.
The phone rang suddenly.
“Any of you here?” Maurice inquired, and all the well-bonded males shook their heads. They listened as Maurice said hello.
“I ain’t seen him,” he told the caller. “But if you do, send him over here. I need all the business I can get.” He hung the phone up and began wiping away the beer spilled on the bar.
“Who was it?” asked Booster, a bit nervous that Dorrie might be on his trail. She’d be furious that he lied.
“That was Prissy,” said Maurice. “She wanted to know if I’d sign her petition.”
“You lying dog,” said Ronny, and popped Maurice an innocent punch on his frail arm. Maurice poured himself another shot of Yukon Jack. Sally would be in at any moment to take over for him anyway.
Pike Gifford looked at Maurice, studied his face a bit. “Was that Lynn?” he asked, and Maurice nodded.
“Whoops!” Ronny shouted. “Man overboard!” It would seem he had learned something useful during his twenty years in the navy.
“What do you mean, man overboard!” Pike demanded. “I got no intentions of getting off this ship.”
“You sure?” Ronny teased. “What if Lynn comes down here to fetch you home?”
“She’ll need the Jaws of Life to get me outta here,” Pike said. Laughter swirled up around Pike Gifford, a good warm blanket. All the crazy lights from the beer signs were blinking like soft, beautiful Christmas lights. And on the jukebox was that old swell of country music, written about the real things that happen to folks. “She’ll need a tow truck,” Pike said. He looked at his buddies corralled around him, his glass of vodka sitting like a slippery ad in some magazine, his Michelob chaser beaded with perspiration. It was good to be alive at times like this. Pike Gifford had never known a better feeling, not even in childhood.
“Hey, Pike!” Billy yelled. “Was it you who wanted to hear ‘All My Ex’s Live in Texas’?” he asked just as the song began. Pike smiled. It was worth the price of Lynn’s anger, a moment like this, when life seemed speeded up, exaggerated, bigger than it should be. It was all worth it, for those times when life seemed smaller than it should be, when Pike himself felt so insignificant that he barely seemed to exist—those times when he walked into Betty’s Grocery only to have Fennelson and Craft women shrink back as they passed him in the doorway, afraid they might rub against him. For those times when he went into a Watertown restaurant and folks stared at him as though he were some kind of wild mountain man. And a few vodkas could make up for all those unpleasant chats Pike had had with the man at workmen’s comp.
“I got it!” Pike heard Billy shout.
“What?” Maurice asked. Sally was filling in for him now behind the bar. The changing of the guard.
“If they manage to get the wet vote changed, Maurice sweetheart,” Billy said, “I know what we can do.” He was very excited. Even the girls from St. Leonard stopped their chattering to listen.
“What?” Maurice asked again. Sally stopped mopping the bar. The last song ended on the jukebox and it sat, quietly. Booster, Ronny, and the others held their drinks in midair and waited.
“Who owns that patch of land just beyond the Mattagash town line?” Billy asked. “Over in St. Leonard? That little flat piece by the river?”
“I suppose it’s old Jack Bishop’s flat,” said Maurice.
“Poor old Jack,” said Ronny. “He’s got a real bad drinking problem.”
“Yes, it is,” said Billy. “It is indeed old Jack Bishop’s flat. Now, who is your best customer?”
“Present company excluded?” asked Maurice, looking around.
“Present company excluded,” said Billy.
“Well, I guess it would be old Jack Bishop.”
“He’s got himself a real bad drinking problem,” Ronny noted, and motioned to Sally for another vodk
a.
“He keeps saying he’s gonna raise Christmas trees on that patch of land,” said Sally. “One of these days.” Billy looked at her in disbelief.
“That land’s so poor he couldn’t raise hell on it with a fifth of whiskey,” Billy said.
“I suppose this place is probably like home to him,” Maurice added. “He ain’t got a family.”
“Correct-o,” said Billy. “And now I ask you, is St. Leonard wet or dry?”
“Wet.” The entire group answered the loaded question.
“Well, there you have it,” Billy said. He flipped a quarter into the air. It turned silver over silver in the light before landing back in his hand. There might be an embarrassing red lobster on his license plate that the clowns down in Augusta—where lobsters and clowns existed—had voted on, and now grown men were forced to drive around with a crustacean on their cars instead of a sensible moose or coyote. Billy imagined all the poor lobsters growing cold outside, shivering in the northern climes, climes they had no damn business in. The little shits in Augusta thought the road dead-ended a foot north of Bangor. Good. Thinking like that would keep the sons of bitches downstate where they belonged. He might have big red claws intruding on his license plate, but he was still The Kid.
“There you have it, Maurice darling,” Billy said again. Maurice was getting more like a whiny old woman every day.
“What?” asked Maurice.
“What?” asked Pike.
“What?” asked Booster and Ronny in harmony.
“What?” Billy echoed. He was astonished at how blind they were. “We move the goddamn Crossroads, that’s what.”
AVAILABILITY AT PINE VALLEY: NO EXPECTATIONS FOR AMY JO
“You will have no objection, I dare say, to your great expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention it.”
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Amy Joy Lawler leaned her shovel against the lower side of the house, where the snow would not bury it, and then removed her mittens. They were heavily beaded with small glass balls of snow, so she beat them nicely against one of the porch posts. The sky was thick and full with flakes, and the town plow had been busy all morning. Amy Joy had shoveled a path just wide enough to drive her little brown Cavalier onto the road. If the snow didn’t stop soon, however, there would be no journey out of the Lawler yard. Amy Joy planned to go shopping while Sicily was getting her blue-gray locks trimmed at Angelique’s Hair Factory.
“I wish she wouldn’t call that place a factory,” Sicily had been saying for years, ever since Angelique had graduated from some kind of hair-trimming class in Montreal and moved stateside to buy out the aging Françoise of Chez Françoise Hair Styles. “It’s as if we’re all going around on conveyor belts, to call a salon a factory.”
“Do you like the cut?” Amy Joy would invariably ask. Angelique claimed to have gained some knowledge akin to mysticism while in Montreal, when it came to senior citizens’ hairdos. She also gave them a ten percent discount and hinted that—knock on wood it would still be years away—when God called his children home, she would also be available to respectfully and appropriately attend to their coiffure down at Cushman’s morgue.
A vehicle came around the turn, a swirl of snow spitting itself off the back tires. It was Booster’s maroon Bronco. The big plow was snugly on the front, as yellow as sun. The Bronco tooted loudly. Behind the wheel, the massive Dorrie Mullins waved a chubby hello to Amy Joy, who grabbed the outside broom and began briskly sweeping snow from the front steps. In the passenger seat, Lola Monihan was bouncing lightly up and down, like some kind of carnival duck. Dorrie didn’t have a prayer when it came to bouncing. The Greeks, or somebody, had discovered laws about such things. There would be no doubt in the women’s minds, Amy Joy knew, that she had seen them, had looked up at the sound of the horn, as any human being would do unless she was from New York City, where no one is surprised at anything.
The Bronco disappeared in a wake of snowflakes. The stores in Watertown and Madawaska would be defiled all day, with Dorrie plowing about in the long johns and pot holders and Clairol hair colors, Lola tagging along like a thin afterthought. Dorrie might even find a new phone shape. Everyone in Mattagash knew that Dorrie had a motif phone in every room of her house, including one shaped like a frog in her bathroom. Alexander Graham Bell would never know the damage he’d left in his wake. The advent of the telephone in Mattagash, Maine, had speeded up gossip immensely. Old truisms such as slower than a turtle coming ass-first were out of work in Mattagash, what with VCRs, piles of telephones, and lottery numbers speeding up the mythology. All the old slow notions had turned, seemingly overnight, into lightning-fast ideas.
Amy Joy found Sicily napping in the recliner. She tiptoed past to leave her mittens on the register to dry and to plug in the teakettle. The phone rang softly. Amy Joy had remembered to click it over to the quieter ring before she went outside to shovel, knowing that Sicily would fall asleep watching her afternoon game shows and that a large jangling would only frighten her awake.
“Miss Lawler?” a woman asked, her voice still holding a slight trace of French accent. It was Patrice Grandmaison, from Pine Valley.
“Oh, yes,” Amy Joy said, remembering. She cast a quick glance in at Sicily, who was still sleeping in her big recliner, her face twitching with the remnants of some fleeting dream.
“Yes,” Amy Joy said again. Pulling the long cord of the phone behind her, she stepped into the kitchen, where she could talk privately.
“I’m calling in reference to our conversation last spring,” Patrice Grandmaison explained. “There’s availability here now for your mother.”
“I see,” said Amy Joy. A sharp twitch of tension clutched at her insides. She felt her stomach muscles tighten in anxiety.
“We’d like for you to make a decision as soon as possible,” said Patrice Grandmaison. “We do, as you know, have a long waiting list.” Of course they did. There were only two facilities this side of Caribou. “Mrs. Lawler has been expecting the move, hasn’t she?”
“Ah, well,” said Amy Joy. “We’ve discussed it a few times, but haven’t really come to a decision.”
“Take another week then,” Patrice offered. Another week! “Tell Mrs. Lawler we’re all anxious to welcome her aboard.” Welcome her aboard! If Sicily heard that, Amy Joy knew how she’d respond. “Welcome aboard what?” Sicily would say. “A sinking ship, that’s what. The ship of death, that’s what.”
It was only minutes later, while Amy Joy sat at the kitchen table snacking on Philadelphia Cream Cheese and crackers, that she heard Sicily stirring in her chair. Then the muffled tones of the television disappeared. Sicily had snapped it off.
“That crazy Price Is Right,” Sicily said as she came stiffly into the kitchen. “Ain’t it a horror what stuff costs these days? You pay more for a can of spray starch than we used to pay for a rump roast.”
“Inflation,” said Amy Joy. Sicily put a tea bag into a cup. Amy Joy began spreading a few extra crackers with cream cheese.
“I hear they plan on cooking up thirty turkeys for that co-op dinner,” Sicily said offhandedly. Amy Joy ignored the hint.
“You have a nice nap?” she asked.
“Nap?” said Sicily. “My mind’s too active to fall asleep in the middle of a day. Lordy, even if I tried to nap, I wouldn’t be able to.” Amy Joy said nothing. This day, of all the snowy days they’d been together, this day was not the one to contradict her.
“I called and canceled your hair appointment,” Amy Joy said. “It’s snowing too hard to be out on the road today.”
“That’s good news,” said Sicily. “I wish she wouldn’t call that place a factory. Makes me feel like we’re all on conveyor belts going around.”
“I’ve got some more good news,” Amy Joy said. She couldn’t look at Sici
ly. She simply did not want to remember the look on her mother’s face upon first hearing the news. There’s availability.
“What’s that?” asked Sicily. She brought her tea to the table and pulled back a chair.
“A real nice lady just called from Pine Valley,” said Amy Joy. She put the extra crackers on a napkin and pushed them over in front of her mother, who took one and bit into it. Amy Joy watched as her mother ate. She was growing down, Sicily was, the way she had once grown up. What a sad, awful process. One should find rewards waiting at the end of a good, long life. One shouldn’t find a bladder used up, teeth loosening, eyes cobwebby with age. One shouldn’t have cruel surprises from a daughter waiting as the last big gift from life.
“Oh?” Sicily said now of the Pine Valley phone call. “I hope Winnie’s flu ain’t turned into a pneumonia or something. She’s got a real bad flu. It’s going around.”
“Winnie’s fine,” said Amy Joy. “Probably lonesome,” she added, “but she’s fine.”
“Well?” Sicily finished her cracker. “What is it then?” Suddenly she knew. Amy Joy’s voice held that wisp of drama about it, a controlled tone—the voice you might use to break the news to someone that there’s been a death. But Winnie was fine. And now Amy Joy was looking away from Sicily, her eyes on the gleaming kettle.
“You look at me,” Sicily said, her own voice thick with emotion. “You got some bad news, then you look at me when you tell me.” She knew what it was, all right. In the marrow of all her bones, she knew. Amy Joy could save her breath, except that Sicily had given her breath, given her life, dammit, and she deserved an eye-to-eye contact. Amy Joy looked at her. Sicily could see tears forming in her daughter’s eyes. Let them flow, the crocodile things that they were. Let them drown Amy Joy in remorse if necessary. Sicily wasn’t going to feel one speck of pity. “But I’m already forty-four and life is passing me by,” Amy Joy liked to whine, but she didn’t know the half of it. How’d she like to be sneaking up on eighty and have no one else in the world but a daughter who’s only forty-four and thankless? A crocodile-tear daughter?
The Weight of Winter Page 18
