Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  Barney looked hard at Moses sipping coffee in a far corner of the room.

  “I promise to get you back by six, sir.”

  Moses retreated to his room, aching for a nap, but no sooner did the cars pull out than he was startled by a rhythmic tapping on his wall. “Boo,” Darlene said.

  She was waiting on the porch when he got there. All twinkly again, she drove him back into his room, thrusting against him. A perplexed Moses was weighing the two hundred jobs at possible risk against his so-far frustrated lust when the screen door banged open behind them. Rob, munching on a Lowney’s Nut Milk, asked, “Were you at least able to get it fixed?”

  “The man said you must have banged it real hard against something because the innards are all fucked up, pardon my French, and he couldn’t do anything with it.”

  “Uncle Barney said that you were feeling poorly and that I should stay with you in your room until he got back, in case you had to vomit or something.”

  After they had gone, Moses opted for the public school boy’s remedy, a cold shower, and then he decided not to join the others for dinner. Instead he ate a cold roast beef sandwich in the kitchen with the grizzly Motor-Mouth. Motor-Mouth’s wife ran a florist’s shop that they both owned in Campbellton. “Having a good summer?” Moses asked.

  “Terrific. We’re averaging three funerals a week.”

  Short-tempered, his casting jerky, Moses lost a big fish in the Bar Pool and never got another strike. Barney came back with a fish that looked to be no more than ten pounds, but—according to young Armand—it had weighed in at twelve.

  Moses retired early, but he was too restless to sleep. So he slipped into his clothes, went down to look at the water, and then climbed to the dining lodge to see if there was a Perrier in the refrigerator. Barney was standing at the bar. Drunk again.

  “I’m developing a property for Warners. Dustin’s crazy for it, but I’m thinking Redford and Fonda. It’s a baseball story, the greatest ever told. I’ve got to keep it under wraps, but let me describe the big scene to you. Redford’s a pitcher, see, the greatest southpaw since Koufax. Only he can no longer throw red hot. He’s got arm trouble. Each time he’s gone to the mound this season the other teams have shelled him. So the manager, played by Walter Matthau, has benched him. Now we are into the deciding game of the World Series and the team’s young hotshot, Al Pacino, has been throwing and he is suddenly in trouble. His team is leading 7–4, but it’s the bottom of the ninth, the bad guys have the bases loaded, and up to the plate steps this big buck, a Reggie Jackson type, who can murder southpaws even when they’re at their best. What does Matthau do? He takes the ball away from Pacino and turns to the bullpen indicating his left arm. The crowd begins to murmur. No, no. Is he crazy? He’s bringing in Redford. Redford takes his warm-up pitches and then Reggie steps into the box. Tension? You can cut it with a knife. Reggie spits and Redford just grins at him. He rears back and pitches. Ball one. Reggie steps out of the box, looks at the third-base coach and steps in again. The catcher gives Redford a signal and he shakes it off. He throws. Ball two. The crowd is roaring. They are cursing Matthau. The windup. The pitch. Holy shit, it’s ball three! The fans are going bananas because they know Redford just has to throw a strike now. He’s won maybe two hundred games for them over the years and now some of those bastards are booing him. Cut to the stands, where Jane Fonda is weeping. She’s eight months pregnant, but the kid isn’t even his. It’s Reggie’s, which will be very controversial as well as give the picture a redeeming social value. Cut to Reggie at the plate. Imitating Babe Ruth, that cocky jigaboo points at the flagpole out there. He’s going to hit a dinger. Cut to Redford’s baby-blues and they say you fucked my wife. Now it comes. This is it. The catcher trots out to the plate and hands Redford another glove and Redford puts it on his left hand. The fucker has been practising a secret pitch for just such a spot as this. HE’S AMBIDEXTROUS! A SWITCH-PITCHER! THE FIRST IN THE HISTORY OF OUR NATIONAL PASTIME SINCE ABNER DOUBLEDAY INVENTED IT! But can he deliver? Sixty thousand fans in the stadium and you can hear a pin drop. Redford rears back. He throws. STEE-RIKE! Reggie calls time out and asks for another bat. A lot of good it will do him. STEE-RIKERINOO NUMBAH TWO! Reggie asks to see the ball. Catcalls. Boos. Laughter. He steps back into the box and this time he’s swinging for downtown you bet, but he’s out of there. STEE-RIKE-OLA NUMBAH THREE! Game over.” Barney, who had been acting out all the parts, slumped exhausted at the bar and poured himself another drink. “I’m going to call it The Big Switcheroo.”

  “How old were you when Solomon’s plane went down?”

  “Old enough to know that it was mighty convenient for somebody.” Barney stretched. He yawned.

  “You know, Berger, I’ve got you figured out. Lionel sent you down here after he found out I was coming. You’re a paid snoop.”

  “Good-night, Barney.”

  But Barney followed him out on to the porch. “Hold on a minute. It’s copyrighted.”

  “What?”

  “The Big Switcheroo. And remember what I said. Have it dyed.”

  Moses took his pill and slipped into bed. He didn’t hear Barney come in. Neither did he appreciate how deeply he must have slept until a subdued Darlene turned up for breakfast. The last to appear, her eyes were puffy and her lower lip swollen.

  “See you later,” Barney said, “I’ve got to go and catch me a big fish.”

  Outside Moses ran into Jim. “A Mr. Harvey Schwartz has called three times from Montreal. He knows that you’re here and he says that it’s urgent.”

  There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun had already burnt the mist off the winding river when Jim anchored at their first drop on the Cross Point Pool.

  Moses took a grilse and a big fish before noon. While Jim went to weigh them, he slipped away to have a few words with Darlene.

  At lunch Jim reported that Moses had taken a five-pound grilse and a twenty-four-pound salmon. Barney had only managed to kill a small fish that weighed in at nine pounds. Rob took his first fish and Larry never got a strike. So Moses was now top rod, if only just. “Yeah,” Barney said, “but he’s shot his legal wad for today and I intend to take a whopper tonight.”

  Moses didn’t turn up for dinner.

  “Where’s the old hand?” Barney asked.

  “Like you said, he’s not allowed to fish any more. I lent him my canoe so he could visit with Gainey downriver.”

  “Well, let’s hope his cheque is good.”

  Moses waited on the road, exactly where he had promised, and as soon as Darlene spotted him she slowed down, pulling up and letting him take the driver’s seat.

  “How was he lost in the mail?” he asked, immediately.

  “Oh, him. Holy Toledo!” Lyndon had been killed in a hunting accident in Vermont and Mary Lou arranged to have him cremated, the skull left intact so that it could sit on the mantelpiece each holiday season. “If only for little Rob’s sake,” she said. “But he was lost in the mail. The undertaker man swore up and down that he had sent him off in a box they had made especially because of how the bones stuck out of regulation size. Some of them didn’t crumble in the fire. He was a Baptist, you know.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Mary Lou wrote to the postmaster-general in Washington and phoned our congressman I don’t know how many times, but to this point in time nobody could ever find him. So poor old Lyndon is lying in some damp ratty post office basement somewhere, unclaimed after all these years because of insufficient postage or some shit like that.”

  Moses turned the Mercedes on to a narrow bumpy track and eased it down a steep incline, tucking it among the trees where it could not be seen from either the road or the river. Then he led Darlene to where he had laid out the quilted blanket.

  “Oh, you’re such a dreadful man,” she squealed, setting down her camera.

  Moses lifted the vodka bottle out of the ice bucket, dipped in for some ice cubes, and poured her a long one. He sat down and watched enviously, his heart aching, as sh
e gulped it. Then she contrived to tumble into his lap, the glass rolling away, her drink spilling on the blanket. He was still mourning the lost liquor as she squirmed out of her jeans and he slid her jersey over her head. He began to fondle and kiss her breasts.

  “Oh boy, do I ever go for that,” she said, swaying from side to side, her pentangle clipping him in the nose as she jiggled her breasts and cooed, “You never guessed, didja?”

  “How Lyndon was lost in the mail?”

  “Nooo! How I had them made as a fortieth-birthday surprise for Barney.”

  “Your breasts?”

  “They’re implants, you silly.”

  A troubled Moses retreated from her, unwrapped a Monte Cristo and lighted it with a shaky hand. “Did he pick the size?”

  “He didn’t exactly, but hint hint, he did show me pictures from magazines of the kind of tits that turned him on. I’m such an airhead. Nothing could happen. I knew that, the doctor assured me, but for the first few months I wouldn’t let anybody squeeze too hard and I didn’t dare sit close to the fireplace at the ski lodge, because I was scared they might—Well, you know. The heat.”

  Moses inhaled deeply, wishing that he were somewhere else, somewhere alone. Sensing that he had begun to drift, a pouting Darlene got him out of his shirt and began to probe between his legs, fishing for him. “There isn’t a manual I haven’t read,” she said. “Talk as dirty as you want. Order me to do things.”

  She bit his ear. Moses yelped and bit right back.

  “Hey, there! Hold your horses. Woa!” she said, thrusting him from her with surprising strength.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my fault. I shoulda told you right off that there’s to be no scratching or biting or even hard pinching, honey, because he checks me out for bruises every night.” She had him out of his trousers now, but stopped abruptly short of descending on him, her face clouding. “How many times can you come at your age, honey? I should know that before I risk spoiling any multiples for me.”

  Possibly, he thought, back in Chapel Hill, where they were very big in furniture, she did door-to-door surveys.

  “Are you still there?” Reaching down to root out his testicles, she discovered, to her consternation, that he only had one. “Holy Toledo,” she said, a shopper short-changed.

  “What did you expect? A cluster?”

  “FAR OUT!” she exclaimed, running her tongue from his groin to his throat like he was an envelope to be sealed.

  But now her camera had become painfully lodged in his back. Moses pried it free. “What did you bring this for?” he asked, holding it up.

  “Silly. I brought it along because I thought you’d surely want to take some pussy pictures for a souvenir to remember me by. Look!”

  Leaping up, she turned her back to him and bent over to clasp her knees, ass riding high, and then she hooked one finger through her black bikini panties, tugging at them. Shifting to an upright position, her back still turned to him, she shot him an over-theshoulder naughty wink, licked her lips and then popped her thumb into her mouth, fellating it. He was reminded of the Goldberg Brothers Auto Parts calendar stapled to the wall in the Texaco station on Laurier Street. Unable to help himself, Moses shook with appreciative laughter. “Oh, Darlene, you are perfection. Honestly.”

  “Then why aren’t you snapping any pictures?” She struck another Playmate pose, this one obliging her to at least partially dress. “Go ahead and shoot the whole roll, but please remember to take it with you.”

  Only then did she notice that he was also dressed.

  For her, he hoped, it would not be passion frustrated or, God help us, unrequited love so much as gym class cancelled for today.

  “Maybe it’s better this way,” she said, “our being, well you know, platonic friends … but I did think we had come here to fuck our brains out and I never did it with a real highbrow before.”

  “Maybe we should start thinking about getting back.”

  “Not yet. Jim Boyd says you can make a salmon dance on its tail. Show me,” she said, her eyes taunting. “Show me.”

  “Okay, but it will be strictly catch-and-release.”

  “Like me,” she said, startling him.

  He led her down the steep embankment to where he had beached Gainey’s canoe on the edge of one of the Shaunnessy pools.

  “If Barney comes by now and sees us together,” she said, “he’ll beat the shit out of both of us.”

  “He’s on the other side of the camp way upriver.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  Lifting Gainey’s rod out of the canoe, he took his anger out on his casting, whipping the line harder than was necessary, straining for the far shore before he even covered the near water. Within minutes he had hooked a big one, but it didn’t bolt downriver or break water. Instead it made for the bottom and sat there. Moses tightened his line, jiggling his rod, sweeping it to the right and then to the left.

  “Can’t you finish anything you begin?”

  “It’s a sulker. Hand me your car keys.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He fed the key ring with the heavy brass disc on to his line. “Bop him over the head.”

  “But what about THE KEYS?” she asked, wide-eyed, as they shot down the line.

  “There’s nothing to worry about.” He would retrieve them as he released the fish in shallow water near the shore. “Hey, there he goes.”

  His line screeched. About sixty feet out the silvery, sea-bright salmon came thrashing out of the water, sailing high. Twisting, flapping. It snapped the leader. The keys, flying free, caught a glint of the failing sun before they plopped into deep water and disappeared. “I’m afraid we’ve got something of a problem now,” Moses said, reeling in.

  “A problem? Holy Toledo! Ass-hole! I don’t believe it. This isn’t happening to me. It’s a dream. You know what Barney’s going to do? He’s going to kill me and then he’s going to cancel all my credit cards again.”

  “But not necessarily in that order.”

  “If I were you right now I wouldn’t be coming on smart-ass. I’d be hoping I was covered by Blue Cross. And how!”

  “Right now I’m not worried about me. It’s Jim I’m worried about.” He would never forgive him. “The two hundred jobs. The furniture factory.”

  “You’re not only crazy but for a highbrow you sure take the airhead prize.” She explained. “How about that, Moe?”

  Moses didn’t answer immediately. Instead he slowly unwrapped a Monte Cristo, bit off the tip, and smiled at her. “I’m going to tell you exactly what to do.”

  BARNEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN JUBILANT. He was top rod. The salmon he had caught, while it was certainly not a whopper, had been sufficient to allow him to tip the scales five pounds better than Moses. But only the Logans and the guides were there to witness Barney’s triumph at the weigh-in outside the ice-house, and Jim seemed somewhat troubled by it. Barney was not surprised that Moses, obviously a sore loser, had yet to return from wherever he was visiting, but he was beginning to worry about his car. He had forgotten that Miss Calculation still had the keys. She never should have driven off without his permission.

  “Maybe somebody ought to go out and look for her,” Mary Lou said.

  Rob cleared his nose of snot with one wipe of his sleeve. “Daddy’s smoking,” he said.

  Larry ground his cigarette into the gravel with his heel. “Where would we look?” he asked.

  “The nearest pit stop is where,” Barney said. “She drives back here drunk she could slam into a tree. You know what that car cost me?”

  Larry passed Barney his flask. His eyes burned bright. “I think she’s with Berger somewhere.”

  “You’re crazy, Larry.”

  “That’s exactly what you said the last time.”

  “Okay, okay, let’s go. We’ll take your car.”

  JIM WAS WAITING on the shore when Moses came in to beach the canoe. “How could you do this to me, Moses?”
/>   “Hasn’t she come back yet?”

  “You better believe it. With some cock-and-bull story too.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She went out for a drive and parked on the Kedgewick road, leaving the keys in the ignition, and walked down to the river to snap some pictures of the sunset. When she got back some no-good Micmacs had made off with her ear. Goddamn it, Moses, I hope you enjoyed yourself, because this could cost me my job and maybe two hundred other jobs for the people around here.”

  “There weren’t going to be any jobs. They had no intention of building a factory here or in Ontario, but it got them a free fishing trip with all the trimmings. Last year they pulled off the same scam in Mexico and went bone fishing for a week without it costing them a dime. Where are they now?”

  “Fat boy and his mommy are in the lodge and the men are out looking for the car. Darlene’s with them.”

  “They’ll run into Gainey on the road and he’ll show them where it was abandoned by those no-good Micmacs who took it for a joyride. However, there is a problem. No keys. Barney will have to jump the wires.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. He’s top rod. The son of a bitch weighed in some five pounds better than you did.”

  “Shall we check it out?”

  “Damn right.”

  So they slipped into the ice-house where Barney’s catch lay in a row on last winter’s shrinking snows, and Jim knelt to probe their bellies one by one. “I’m going to have to fire Armand,” he said.

  Then the cars rolled back into camp, the Cadillac followed by the Mercedes. Darlene jumped out, not looking right or left, but running to her bedroom, pursued by Barney.

  “Is he going to beat up on her?” Jim asked.

  “Just check her out for bruises.”

  Mary Lou had poured herself a beer in the dining lodge. “They didn’t steal anything or do any damage. Even Barney’s camera was still on the front seat. Isn’t that nice?”

  Moses was drawn to the radio. The late news. Watergate again. The tape that had been mysteriously erased. General Haig, speaking at a press conference, suggested that there was a sinister influence at work in the White House. Moses was still pondering that, dismissing his initial gut reaction as crazy—well, at best unlikely—when Barney came striding into the lodge. “The best man won,” he said, “or haven’t you heard?”