He can see the multi-coloured bottles of aftershave and hair tonic, the neon blue disinfectant for the black combs, the lather creams, the strong, manly scent of sandalwood and alcohol, tobacco smoke, and sweat. How old Bud would set a board across the chair, heft him up, wrap a red apron around his neck, push his head forward, and begin to work with the scissors. The sound of stainless steel parts working in concert. McKelvey keeps his eyes closed, pretending not to follow the conversation between his father and Bud and the other men assembled in the barbershop, this sanctuary of all things male. They speak in loose code about local women, about their physical attributes, then on to hunting, drinking. When the haircut is done, Bud takes a hard-bristled brush and whisks away the hair trimmings from the back of his neck, and the brush hurts, but he doesn’t say anything, not ever. Bud with his big boxer’s face that reminds McKelvey of an old bulldog with sad, bloodshot eyes. Bud always gives him a lollipop from an old coffee tin he keeps under the cash.
McKelvey opens his eyes, stamps his feet against the cold, and moves on down the sidewalk, filled with a sense of loss for something that is gone both for himself and the rest of the world, all of the generations to come. And he thinks it might be something called innocence or perhaps the unspoiled pleasures of simplicity and gratitude for the small gestures in life.
Carl Levesque is leaning over the counter chatting with the middle-aged clerk, a woman who looks as though she believes despite overwhelming odds in the promise of meagre satisfaction from this life. She is attractive despite a world-weary weight to her eyes and her face, though McKelvey can tell she was likely a knockout in her youth, black hair tied back. There are two old men seated at individual tables near the window, each of them quietly sipping coffee and reading newspapers, likely enjoying the time away from their wives. The swivel stools that run along the counter are empty.
“Well, that must be Mr. McKelvey,” Levesque says as he turns upon hearing the jingle of bells tied to the door.
McKelvey nods and holds out his hand as he approaches the real-estate-agent-cum-small-town-entrepreneur.
“What’ll you have, Charlie? Do you mind if I call you Charlie?”
“It’s my name,” McKelvey says. And he smiles at the woman now as he squints to read the nametag pinned to her ugly beige uniform blouse: Peggy.
“Anything you want,” Levesque says with a sweep of his hand across the vista of stale doughnuts, a half-empty fountain well of lemonade, and two pots of coffee. Levesque smiles, pleased with himself at this generous offering. McKelvey sees instantly that this man is a salesman, has likely sold a little of everything in his life — toilet brushes and cars with bad radiators — and he would get on your nerves if you spent too much time with him.
“I’ll take a small coffee, black,” McKelvey says. He no longer cares about the regimen imposed in the aftermath of his gastrointestinal hemorrhage, which was partly, though only partly, responsible for his early exit from the force. No more plain Balkan-style yogourt, no more celery snagged in his teeth for him, no sir, not since Dr. Shannon delivered The News. So, fuck it. Black coffee, please. And suddenly his entire body thrums with desire for a cigarette, even though it’s been a miraculous three months since he gave up on trying to ration himself or otherwise control the uncontrollable, which is to say he quit cold turkey.
“No cherry stick?” Levesque asks, and pokes McKelvey in the belly. It’s a move that instantly provokes a reptilian response within McKelvey — he clenches his teeth and swallows the urge to snap the man’s finger. Don’t touch me, he could say. Not ever. “I gotta tell you, they’re goddamned dynamite,” Levesque continues. “I eat, what, two or three a week?”
He says this to Peggy, who has already poured McKelvey’s coffee.
“A day, more like it,” Peggy says.
Levesque laughs, and it sounds like gravel pouring through a tin culvert, forced and over-loud. At the tail end of the laugh there is a wheeze in the man’s lungs, this constricted exhalation. McKelvey imagines the man chain-smoking two packs a day. Sitting behind a cheap metal desk in some trailer on a used car lot, watching the door, willing it to open, asking everyone about the weather, how about that rain, how about that goddamned heat. McKelvey is already finding it hard to like this man.
“Thanks, Peggy,” McKelvey says, and nods. “I’m Charlie.”
“You’re welcome, ‘I’m Charlie,’” she says, and then turns to busy herself with straightening things on the counter behind her.
Seated at a table, Levesque proceeds to pour half a pound of sugar into his own coffee, stirring and stirring. McKelvey is reminded of someone mixing cement. He takes a pull on his coffee and is relieved to discover it is not as bad as the bowel-blitzing sludge the old-timers are swilling down at the Station. It’s a wonder they’re still alive, though he supposes what hasn’t killed them has in fact made them stronger.
Levesque noisily slurps a taste of his coffee and, satisfied with his chemistry, he sits back and clasps his hands. McKelvey notices a Mason’s ring. Levesque says, “So then, friend, what brings you to the whirling metropolis of Ste. Bernadette?”
Levesque is a squat man, shaped like a block, and he is unable to accept the fact of his balding. The long strands of brown-grey hair that remain have been swirled in a loop in the centre of his head, likely held there by a combination of sheer determination and hairspray. McKelvey notices everything — clothes, posture, eyes, gestures — the smallest indicators that for years were his stock and trade as a cop on the beat in Toronto, in fraud investigations, and finally on the Hold-Up Squad. He sees Levesque now, sitting across from him with a wide grin, his sports coat too tight and the bad comb-over, and he is reminded of a case he once worked when he was on the Fraud Squad. A pyramid scheme of sorts, worth about a million all told, and it turned out the mastermind behind the whole operation was an unemployed shoe salesman — and Levesque reminds him of everything about the perp.
“It’s been a long time since I was back home,” McKelvey says. He glances over at the counter and he catches Peggy’s eye. He gives a small smile.
“You were born and raised here? I didn’t know that. Well, welcome home, Charlie. I bet the place has changed a lot.”
“You could say that.”
“Sure as hell has changed in the four years since I moved here. Came through town on my way out east from Kenora. I was running a business up there, had the rights to a process whereby you remove this substance from pulp, you know, from the mills, this substance with a name I can’t even pronounce — placto-u-nameen something — about fourteen consonants in it and sixteen chemistry elements. Anyway, it’s used in the production of industrial-grade adhesives. We never got off the ground because of the goddamned banks and the assbackward government in this country, but …”
McKelvey watches the man and notices the exact spot where he loses himself, his words simply evaporate before him. Rather than jump in to pull Levesque from the strange tangent, he sips his coffee and waits. He has nowhere to be, no plans.
“Anyhoo,” Levesque says, drawing back. “Stopped for a few days in Ste. Bernadette and bingo, four years later I own half the town.”
“Duncan at the hotel was mentioning something about that. You want to open a casino resort?”
Levesque laughs again, and again it is too loud in the small coffee shop. Like someone trying too hard at a party to laugh at all of the host’s jokes.
“Oh, I’ve got plans, you could say that. Yes, sir, I’ve got plans. But we’ll have time for all of that, my friend. Right now let’s talk about how I can help you. You’re looking for a short-term rental, is that right? Something maybe semi-furnished?”
McKelvey sits back and exhales a long breath. What he is looking for he can’t quite say. Short-term, long-term, a parade, a trip to the moon, a little peace and quiet. His eyes move to the front window, the view of Main Street. A few cars roll slowly by. No pedestrian traffic. He misses Front Street with its shops and restaurants, the grocery
store open twenty-four hours, the swirl and smells of the St. Lawrence Market with its hanging meats and strange slippery seafood. He misses Garrity’s Pub just below his condo, the way his whole mood would change when he crossed the threshold. He is suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that he has been foolish, both for coming all the way up here with no real purpose, but also for trusting this used car salesman to look after his primary need at this point in time, which happens to be shelter.
“Duncan mentioned my old house might be available,” McKelvey says.
“Where did you live?”
“20 King Street.”
Levesque’s eyes brighten, and McKelvey can practically see the dollar signs turning like lemons and crowns rolling on a slot machine.
“It’s your lucky day, Charlie,” Levesque says. And he smiles.
Levesque’s car is a 1995 black Cadillac sedan, something with a lot of miles on it, but McKelvey figures that looking out at the hood ornament makes the man feel as though he has somehow arrived. They slip inside the vehicle and Levesque turns the key. It takes a moment to catch, the teeth in the starter grinding against bone, and then the car fills with a booming voice from some self-help tape.
“True leaders wake up every day and they ask themselves this one question —”
Levesque reaches out and switches the volume off. He flips the sun visor, grabs a package of cigarettes, and pops one in his mouth.
“Don’t mind if I smoke there, Charlie?”
“It’s your car,” McKelvey says. “I smoked on and off for forty years.”
And it is hard to believe, hearing himself admit this out loud. For close to four decades he stuck cylinders of nicotine and tobacco into his yap. This would be twice as long as his son lived on this planet. Life is not fair. Gavin would be twenty-two this year. Probably finishing college. And here he is, old and skinny, sitting in a pimp’s car beside some shoe salesman sucking on a goddamned cigarette. He wants a pain pill. Something to close around him like a glove.
“What was the longest you stayed off them?” Levesque hits the button to roll his window down a few inches.
“Six, seven years one time,” McKelvey says. “When my son was born, both my wife and I quit. I guess I quit with her just to be in solidarity. She stayed off them. But you know, eventually you start sneaking your way back.”
“I can’t quit them. I’ve accepted my failings in that area, you know. I’m going to smoke. I’m a smoker. Probably kill me one day, but …”
Levesque sucks at the cigarette. It is a Player’s Light Regular. McKelvey’s old brand. The sailor on the cover with his stoic face …
“I’d take one, actually,” McKelvey hears himself say. And he senses within himself this mechanism at play — if it had a sound, it would be a click. Something he attempted but failed to properly convey to his therapist, the one to whom he was referred by his family doctor. Dr. Shannon saying he should see a therapist a couple of times a week, keep a journal of his “feelings” — anything and everything, just to write it out. The “mental stuff,” Shannon explained, being just as important as the “medical stuff” during cancer treatment. The thing is, McKelvey wants to know why he should care. As though keeping a journal or discussing his fears — or sparing himself from the ravages of tobacco, for that matter — will be the tipping point in his so-called “breakthrough.” There is no trick to this; it is simply one foot in front of the other. Whatever waits for him up ahead has been waiting there all the days of his life.
“Oh, I don’t know, friend.” Levesque laughs, and this time it comes across as sincere, a chuckle between friends. “I don’t want to be aiding and abetting a recovered addict. But you’re a grown man, I suppose. Fire away.”
He hands the pack over. McKelvey lights one. His first in ninety days. The nicotine rushes to his head and he feels nauseous, dizzy. Stoned, perhaps? Yes, that’s it. The power of this drug is revealed in its true light when you have spent some time away from it. He enjoys the rush, the buzz. As always, it simply feels good to feel different. And then, like an alarm sounding his guilt, the cellphone he has shoved in his jacket pocket goes off. He fumbles, gets it free, and looks at it while it continues to ring.
“I think you have to flip that thing there and say hello.”
McKelvey gives Levesque a dead-eye glance, flips the phone open, and moves it to his ear and mouth.
“McKelvey,” he says reluctantly.
“Charlie. My god. Do you know how many messages I’ve left?”
“Good morning, Caroline.”
“It’s not even morning out here yet. You’ve had me worried sick. Jessie has been calling me, too. Where are you?”
McKelvey looks out the window at the passing bleakness of a small northern town at the apex of winter.
“Back home,” he says.
There is a moment of silence. Levesque is listening but trying to look busy, adjusting the car’s temperature controls.
“Is everything okay, Charlie?” she asks. “That’s a stupid question, I know. You were supposed to go for counselling after the incident by the waterfront, but I don’t think you ever followed through. Why would I expect you to if you couldn’t even stick with counselling when Gavin was killed. And you’re drinking. You know you called me a few times in the middle of the night. You didn’t sound well, the messages you left. Do you remember that?”
McKelvey takes a long drag on the cigarette, blows smoke out the window, then rolls it down farther and flicks the butt outside. His brain warbles now, he is a bobble-head character. The succubus nicotine whispers again, again, again.
“I needed a change of scenery,” he says. “And I’m not drinking. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about me, Caroline. You don’t have that burden anymore.”
“Fuck off, Charlie.” The vulgarity takes him by surprise. He sits back as though he has been slapped across the face by his mother. “You’re such an asshole sometimes. You need to pull your head out of that place you keep it and look around. You’ve got a granddaughter. You’ve got Jessie. They need you. Grownups don’t just run away and hide, Charlie. Is that what you’re doing, running away?”
He can no longer sustain the conversation. He is being pulled away and muffled by an invisible hand. The phone must have turned on by accident, perhaps bumped or jostled. He will be more careful in the future. Not knowing about missed calls, not seeing the flashing red light won’t bother him nearly as much.
“It wasn’t an incident, by the way,” he says. “A good cop got killed that day.”
“Oh, Charlie … I wish you could see what I see. What everybody else sees …”
“I’ll call you when I have better reception,” he says. “You’re breaking up.”
“Sure. Whatever you say —”
McKelvey hangs up and ensures the phone is off. He slips it back inside his coat and turns to Levesque, who he imagines has conjured all sorts of visions.
“My wife,” McKelvey says, and leaves it at that. There is nothing more he needs to say. Levesque nods once and they drive through the town, out from the small and dying business section to the grid pattern of two- and three-bedroom simple bungalows the Carver Company built decades ago to house its employees and their families. The homes are, for the most part, all the same, appearing much like the PMQs on a military base.
“All these company houses, I scooped them up just under two years ago,” Levesque says. “Cheap as hell. I got a consortium of developers from Toronto backing me up on the deal.”
“How many are still occupied?”
“About a third. Carver executives tell me the mine is in its last year and a half, but that’s confidential. They’ve got a skeleton crew mucking the bottom, ready to do the cleanup and shut the lights off on the way out. Of course the mine has been hobbling toward this for a long time, but still. You know, as long as there are even a few jobs down there, people feel we’ve still got a beating heart.”
“My father told me a long time ago what this day
would be like. How it was coming and, more important, how the town should prepare for it.”
“Our mayor, Danny Marko, has this big plan. He calls it his twenty-year vision. There’s serious talk about a new transmission line being built up here, bringing power line jobs and construction dollars through town for a five-year period. Then there’s our chief of police. He wants to truck Detroit’s shitty diapers up here, maybe use the mine as a big hole to fill up. Meantime, the dropout rate in Saint B is into the double digits. Kids are taking off for the oil fields in Fort McMurray or the diamond mine up in Yellowknife. Hard to keep a kid in school when he can go to Alberta and make twenty bucks an hour just sweeping the floors, no experience required. Some days I think maybe I should follow them on out there.”
Levesque rolls the window down all the way to flick his cigarette butt. A blast of cold air rolls in and wakes McKelvey from his nicotine stupor. The air, at least, is fresh and clean and smells of a coming snowfall. It is strange not to smell Lake Ontario, the stale subway air wafting from sidewalk grates, the chromium and coal ash.
“And that’s it for today’s depressing small-town news,” Levesque says, and laughs like a dog barking. His chest wheezes. He catches his breath and adds, “Welcome home, Charlie. Welcome home.”
Five
The boy who always has some marijuana now has something else. He stands in the centre of the boredom of this dying place and it offers the promise of amusement, an antidote to the tedium. At the same time, he offers himself the gift of small-town popularity. He will never want for friends as long as he always has a few grams of weed in his backpack. And now this, the magic powder.
At first he thought the yellow-white substance in the foil was cocaine. He got it at the arcade, the same place where he got his pot, but had no idea what he was looking for, what cocaine or any other hard drug smelled or looked like. He rubbed some of the powder on his gums, as he had seen narcos do in the movies, and it gave him the edge of a tiny buzz. He sprinkled it on a pinch of tobacco and rolled a joint. In this way he discovered the pathway to the waterfall. And now, standing here in his parents’ garage, he shows the others how to smoke it using a ballpoint pen with the ink cylinder removed. Heat the foil with a lighter, inhale the chemical reaction. Instant payback. No waiting required. Flick the switch and you are perfect.
The Devil's Dust Page 3
