The old hotel reminded him of the crazy antics he and Mark had shared almost thirty years earlier, sneaking into the bar amid the crowd on a Saturday night when they were just eighteen. Unwilling to call it quits, with desperate energy, after closing time they would take off on some death-defying back road drive, just to see the sunrise silent and stunning on the snow-covered peaks of the Cariboo Mountains.
Mark lived in the big city now, with his wife and three kids. From what Ben had gathered during their few brief visits over the years, between Mark’s work and myriad other activities, his life sounded hectic. Nevertheless Ben felt somewhat envious, now that his own marriage and that round of dreams were over.
Petro Doroshenko was being laid to rest in the new cemetery north of town, and the family would take a while to join the reception. Before going in to the hall Ben walked around the block, past the ice arena, the library, and through the original town cemetery where there had been no vacant plots for fifty years. Headstones there dated back to the 1860s, including those of notable pioneers. He imagined the townsite back then, timber buildings and wagon trails, a river junction clean and promising. Like smelling salts, the pulp mill stink brought him to.
The Legion Hall was already crowded. Several tables end to end were laden with trays of sandwiches, cheese and cold cuts, homemade buns, pickles, pastries, big pots of tea and a coffee urn.
Mark had five older sisters and two younger brothers, dozens of cousins, nieces and nephews, and most appeared to have children of their own now. They had scattered across Canada over the years, so this occasion in Quesnel would be a reunion for them. Ben said hello to those he knew, and other friends of the family he recognized from the past. The broad room warmed with kind words, mainly brief exchanges and memories of Petro, while the scents of wet clothes and elderly perfumes combined, kids chased one another among the chairs, and the cold world beyond the windows was forgotten for a while.
After an hour, Ben approached Mrs. Doroshenko to express his sympathy. She squeezed his hand and smiled. Born in the Ukraine, she retained both an accent and a way of speaking that passed on her culture to the family, as well as her eighty years of wisdom. She was beautiful, as were her daughters, with their Slavic cheekbones and ocean-blue eyes. Back in the day, Ben had pined with unholy thoughts for more than one of them.
In the wee hours of a Sunday morning he and Mark’s sister Rita once made out in their family bathroom, or started to. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They froze, zipped up, whispered in terror. Petro’s hand shook the doorknob.
“Who’s in there? I need to pee.”
“Just me, Daddy, just a minute.” The window too small for escape, they stared at each other wild-eyed. Finger to her lips, she directed him to stand in the bathtub, drew the shower curtain, and left. Half-asleep, Petro muttered something, then pissed as long and loud as a horse, and went back to bed. Ben had never dared share this memory with Mark. Now the patriarch lay in a pine box buried by dirt and falling snow.
Mark was occupied in one conversation after another with his extended family members and the many other guests. His friend did not have much time to chat, Ben knew, and he felt that they had shared what was most important in a few words. He was pleased, however, that Mark followed him outside when he left the reception. They walked down the sidewalk away from the hall. Mark produced a pack of cigarettes, and they both had one for old times, a fearless taste of death. Ben coughed, and slapped his chest, out of practice. They laughed together for the first time in a long while.
“I’m too damn busy to have fun anymore,” Mark said flatly. Snow fell steadily, more so than earlier.
“Well, you’ve got the kids, they look like plenty of fun to me.”
“Oh sure,” he nodded. “You know what I mean.”
“Well, keep in touch, maybe do a bit of a road trip next spring? Or we could head out to Chilko Lake and canoe for a few days.”
“I’d like that,” Mark said.
“Your suit’s getting wet,” Ben said. “And I’m going to head home. I’ll be lucky to make it before dark in this weather.”
“Yeah, take it easy on the highway,” his friend replied, with a glance at the grey sky.
Two inches of wet snow was tracked into slush and thrown against the windshield by passing vehicles as Ben headed south. That cigarette had given him a headache, compounded now by tension as he drove.
The Saab was front-wheel drive, Swedish blizzard proof, but the worn summer tires were useless. In fact he’d meant to get the winters put on this weekend, before he’d received news of the funeral. He crept along in second gear, felt slush pull the car, and adjusted his hands on the wheel to guide it through the ruts. Most of the traffic moved likewise, but other yahoos, of course, spun by uncaring or oblivious to the hazards. A red Chevy pickup blasted by him, passing on a double line, its spray obscuring his vision until the wipers on high cleared the glass. Twenty minutes later he came upon it crossways in the opposite ditch, still running, the driver with his door open. He might have stopped to offer help, earn a little karma, but no.
South of the old Moffat ranch he spotted flashing lights, red and blue, an ambulance and two RCMP cruisers. One damaged car was off-kilter on the shoulder, another had gone over the bank and rolled, baggage and miscellanea scattered around it. Paramedics were busy with stretchers, and the impatient officer in his yellow jacket waved the traffic through at a gawking crawl.
Damn it, Ben whispered, I do not want to die in a car. Not like James Dean, Albert Camus, Fayed and Diana. Slim novels came to mind, ill-fated characters in transit at the hands of John Hawkes and Roch Carrier; he liked short novels, but wanted a long life story for himself, as thick as Infinite Jest. The MVA in songs and films, the list goes on; countless plot points, wrong turns, too many drinks, veiled suicides, murders, truckers high on speed, missed forecasts, bad brakes, bald tires, postscript morality, and told-you-so.
On a sharp bank off the highway, two metal crosses stood between clumps of sagebrush, dark bouquets of old flowers now softly laden with snow. Ben shivered at the sight. Between the wipers he noticed the patterns of mothy flakes against the windshield, hypnotic for a driver.
Petro Doroshenko had been a travelling salesman back in the seventies, put half a million miles on a yellow Buick Electra, and was renowned for the speed he drove in any weather. He’d survived decades of hazards, and might have scoffed at Ben crawling along in second gear. For a while the highway ran parallel to the Fraser River, where ice was forming along the banks, and demonic twisters raced across the big current.
South of Alexandria, another car was in the snowbank, yellow hazard lights blinking. Brand new Chrysler, the big gangster model with black windows. The driver standing there in a black overcoat, elbow cocked and a cellphone pressed to his ear in the howling snow. Ben doubted Lee’s ranch was in range of any satellite supplier even on a clear day, and the nearest house was not even in sight. He recalled the drivers in distress he had passed by, and the paramedics serving those in need. So he geared down. The fellow observed this and raised his other hand, which Ben took to mean he might appreciate some help. He started waving, waving Ben on that is. A moment later, the guy shook his fist right at the Saab, then slashed his hand through the air. No help for him, not from any poor dope in a weird old car.
Already unsettled enough beforehand, the man’s anger rattled Ben. Here you offer to help, exchange a few words at least, and get threatened in return. He had driven that same stretch of road countless times. Suddenly he felt that he had always been driving it, that this trip would never end.
As another giant northbound Kenworth bore down on him, Ben envisioned death by chrome and clenched the wheel. For months after his wife Shannon had moved out, Ben felt as if he lived in a cave. He questioned everything, up to and including life itself, at which point he was damn certain about one thing: he wanted the chance to try again, to maybe recreate himself.
A few kilometres farther on, when he ro
unded the curve north of McLeese Lake the old garage came into view, with the homemade painted sign Tires & Repair. The Saab pulled onto the gravel frontage road as if it had a mind of its own, a northern instinct for survival. The building had a large low-pitched roof now laden with snow, rough lumber siding, and big barn-style doors, one of which was open. An old man wearing a red toque and greasy coveralls shuffled out of the garage.
“Hello!” Ben exclaimed, as he got out. He steadied himself with a hand on the cold fender, and took a deep breath. The man nodded.
“Wow, am I glad to get off that crazy highway,” he said. The mechanic looked up and down 97 with the hint of a smile, no doubt because it brought him his living. Then he bent his neck to peer at the bald summers, and shook his head. Ben nodded and slapped the roof of the car. “I know, I need some winter tires, in a bad way.”
“Yes, you do. But I’m not sure if I have any to fit this thing,” he said. His name Vern was stitched onto his bib.
“No?” Ben said, his voice a tad hoarse with panic.
“We can take a look, though.” He turned into the doorway.
“Oh please, thank you,” Ben followed.“It’s been two hours since I left Quesnel, and it will be another two to Williams Lake at this rate, if the snow doesn’t let up.”
Vern led the way through the work bay to the back of the shop, then into a side room lined with racks of glowing black tires. An overpowering sight and smell of new rubber fused in Ben’s mind with safety, security, a renewed hope for his future, any future. It turned out that Vern did have at least three sets of tires that would fit the Saab, which led Ben to wonder, then smile. Vern went down the row, touching the tires, tracing his fingers through the various tread patterns, stating their make and price. The price increased as he did so. Finally he came to a set of four still loosely sealed in yellow plastic, which he peeled aside, and gave a significant nod.
“This is the Super Tire,” he said quietly, “but it’s expensive.”
“That’s what I want,” Ben said, the oldest adage of consumer doctrine long ago etched in his brain.
Ben pulled the car into the bay guided by the old man’s hands, until he raised his palms. With a heavy trolley jack Vern raised the left side of the car. The air wrench hissed and rattled. Then he laid the wheel horizontal on the spindle, and with a flat-tipped bar broke the seal of the old rubber. He fitted the sharp new tire to the wheel, inflated and balanced it with small steel clamps. He would repeat this exercise four times.
Ben admired Vern’s skill, the efficient way he lifted the tires and tools, but he didn’t want to stand there looking over his shoulder, as if he were inspecting the job.
“Let me know if I can help at all.”
“Huh?” Vern frowned over his shoulder, his red toque scrunched down to his bushy grey brows.
Ben stepped away, began a slow tour of the garage. He’d noticed the paintings in passing when he first stepped inside, but had been mainly focused on his own mission. The art was done on plywood, cut into rectangles two feet by three or three by four, and nailed to the walls. On a section of bench separate from the tools, paint cans were lined up, brushes in a jar of murky thinner, stained rags.
They were mostly landscapes, and the earliest ones were quite crude, the point of view almost childlike: crowded with conifers, the recurring shape of a dark mountain, and the striped highway going nowhere. They were all neatly dated and initialled VJN in the lower right corner. As Ben walked around studying them, a progression over time was evident. More paint, some left thick for texture, more colours, a growing command of perspective, and even light. The most recent one was propped on the bench, patches of paint still glistening wet. The centre of the work was half a car, that is, the left third was the interior wood-grained door of the garage, which bisected a white Ford Taurus at its edge, the rear of the vehicle raised on a jack, black torn tire horizontal against the gravel. The right portion showed the highway, part of the mountain, and that is where the picture ended, leaving a corner of bare plywood. The vehicle and jack were perfectly detailed, and the interior view conveyed by the wooden door was uncanny. Ben turned to the real door, the view beyond, an approaching dusk. He looked back at the painting under the glare of the shop lights, and it startled him — in a rough and ready way it brought to mind the work of Alex Colville. Stark realism, a car or a train portrayed in such a way that it conveys a visceral sense of danger. Ben pictured Vern with a hubcap-palette in one hand and a brush in the other, wearing his coveralls and toque, working on the paintings, furbishing this rustic place to his own liking over the years. There were no stock car posters or busty naked centrefolds.
Inside of an hour Vern had the new tires mounted and bolted on, one last blast of the air wrench, its echo in the gallery, and the job was done. The old tires lay in a puddle to the side, and Ben gave them a kick for good measure.
At the tool end of the bench, Vern carefully entered numbers onto his adding machine, click click and here’s the bill. No credit card machine, so Ben wrote a cheque, which Vern studied closely. Ben pointed out that his address and phone number in Williams Lake were on it and Vern considered this as though it wasn’t all that reassuring.
“How about a coffee before you go?” he asked, tucking the cheque under his cardboard blotter.
“Coffee, yes, that would be great, thank you.” Although Ben was eager to get going, maybe a coffee would help him focus on the road, and he was curious to know more about old Vern.
They leaned against the bench with their coffee. Ben admired the new tires on the Saab, shiny black, definitely perked the old girl up, and now he was set for winter. At least as far as tires were concerned.
“You should get four years out of those, if you change them every April,” the old guy said. “In a few days, go by OK Tire there in Williams Lake, and get Paul to torque these nuts. If he’s grumpy tell him Vern sent you.”
“Will do,” Ben said, somehow buoyed by this reference. He glanced back at the plywood propped on the bench, the half-car detail and unfinished space. “I see you are a painter.”
Vern did not reply, but looked around as if surprised anyone had noticed the array of his other work.
“I don’t know much about it — painting, I mean,” Ben said, “but you have something here.”
Vern looked him straight in the eye, and after several seconds Ben lowered his gaze.
“Bah, I took it up years ago to pass the time is all. Been here thirty-six years, no family, sometimes I need something to do,” Vern explained. “When I bought this place, there was a café on this very spot, gawd knows why, a rundown shack really. It’d been closed up for a year, and was full of mice and rats, living off the fryer grease and leftovers. Shit and piss, there was no saving anything.” Vern lifted his hand off the bench with a gesture of disgust. “So I burned it down.”
It was Ben’s turn to remain silent.
“I did it in the wintertime, with two feet of snow over everything for safety sake. When the fire really took hold the rats and mice started squeaking and screaming out every hole in that shack. And they kept coming, even out of the ashes, into the snow, dragging themselves half-burned. Thank God it was thirty below, they froze to death before they found my house. I was picking up frozen rats all winter. I tell you, it was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Vern shivered at the memory. “If I could paint that now, maybe I could get it out of my head? But it’s hard, you know, to capture something like that. Something you fear.”
“Yes, I imagine it is,” Ben nodded. Left to his own devices, he wondered how he might convey the sheer terror that had passed through him earlier? It was now after four, almost dark. “I appreciate the service, very much.”
“You’re welcome, son,” Vern said, and stepped outside the door while Ben got into his car.
Ben backed out slowly and angled into the driveway, the tread of brand new tires marking the past hour’s fresh snow. It was still coming down, but the flakes were smaller. Visi
bility was far better, and the snowplough had gone by, leaving a lovely scatter of gravel in its wake. His dinner date that evening came to mind. If he got home by six he’d have an hour to shower and compose himself, exorcise any last fears of death for this day. Felicia is an enchanting name, he thought, is Spanish food too much to hope for?
Vern stood in the glow of the big shop light, with garage doors open, and his tools and paintings visible inside. He took a step toward the Saab, so Ben rolled down the window. The old fellow leaned over, his gaze sharp from beneath his bushy grey brows.
“You take care driving. Even with Super Tires anything can happen.”
Nine Pound Lake
(The real name of the lake and its exact whereabouts will not be given. Word gets around, and in one or two seasons — goodbye big trout. Seen it many times. And while it’s hard to believe this particular lake could ever be fished out, I’m not taking any chances. Thanks.)
Woke up, my head rattled like a can full of gravel. Mostly naked, but my jeans pulled down over my old snakeskin boots, which I’d forced my feet into the night before and couldn’t get the damn things off come three a.m. or whenever it was. Half a bottle of Scotch was left open on the night table. Worse than that was an almost empty pack of cigarettes, because I hadn’t had a smoke for the previous year and a half. But the real tragedy was my almighty erection that would not go away.
Saturday morning sunshine, the kind I normally look forward to, today it torched my eyeballs.
All Those Drawn to Me Page 8
