Waiting for Joe

by Sandra Birdsell

  When Joe enters the parking lot at Canadian Tire Pete is slouched in a lawn chair beside his small truck, legs splayed, the bill of his cap pulled low. He’s been watching for him, Joe guesses, and notes the gate to the garden centre is closed. Something is up. At that moment Alfred comes back on the line and Joe stops, turns away from the noise of traffic and hears Alfred ask, “Is it raining there?” Meaning, where is Joe?

  Their house on Arlington Street is walking distance from Deere Lodge and so, for a short time, they’d shared the common bond of the weather and the traffic along Portage Avenue.

  “No, it’s not raining, but it sure looks like it wants to,” Joe says, having to speak loudly to make himself heard.

  “I don’t understand that. It’s pouring here. It has been for hours,” Alfred says, annoyed. “It was five o’clock this morning when I went to the bathroom. It was raining then, and it still is.” When Joe doesn’t reply, his father’s voice softens. “If this keeps up, don’t come today. More than likely the underpass will be flooded.”

  Joe takes a deep breath. “But, Dad, you know I’m away right now. Laurie and me? I told you that. We’ll be back at the end of the month. I won’t see you until then.” He winces inwardly as he recalls the way Laurie and he had to struggle to get Alfred across the lobby at Deere Lodge, his suitcase falling open, the hollow clatter of the tea-stained dentures tumbling from the plastic bag and skittering across the floor. Alfred’s spares, the several pairs of dentures he’d hung on to throughout the years in fear something might happen to the current ones. The sight of them had taken the wind from Alfred’s sails, jolted him from his tantrum and sent Joe to his knees. He’d gathered them up, vowing to himself, and later to Alfred, that his stay at Deere Lodge was only temporary.

  “That’s right, you told me,” Alfred says, his voice thinning to squeeze back another paroxysm of coughing, and failing. “I’m here,” he says a moment later.

  “That cough of yours sounds pretty serious.”

  “You’ll be back when?” Alfred asks.

  “The end of May, first week in June at the latest,” Joe says above the sudden blare of a car horn, the screech of brakes. He looks up to see the near rear-end accident at the intersection beyond. Antsy, he thinks. Everyone’s antsy this morning, including him, to finish talking, to get on with what he needs to do next. Call Steve. Get to McMurray and find some work, fast.

  “I’ll get the girl to write that down,” Alfred says and calls to the woman attending him.

  “Not now,” Joe interrupts.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to go now, Dad. I’ll call later on in the day.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  “It’s the girl here, wants to know what time. They’ve tried reaching you at the house and the shop, and both of the phones are down.”

  “I gave them this number,” Joe says, exasperated. “I told them to call me on my cell.”

  “You’re not exactly answering that phone either,” Alfred says. “Where’s Laurie?”

  “She’s here with me. Why?”

  “She wasn’t there yesterday. Clayton Wells went by the house looking for you and no one was home.”

  Joe’s mind reels with confusion for a moment. “That’s because we’re travelling right now. I just told you that. Of course Laurie wasn’t at home, she’s here with me, Dad.” Why was Clayton Wells at the house? he wonders. Was he at the house, or is Alfred confused?

  “Well, put her on then,” Alfred says. “I want to have a word with her. She should stop sending flowers. I’d do better with a shot of brandy now and then, and the chance to see her ugly puss.”

  “I can’t put her on. She’s up in the hotel room. I came down to get some breakfast,” Joe lies.

  “You’ve been gone four days, you must be in BC by now,” Alfred says. His moment of lucidity is unsettling.

  “Why did Clayton go to the house?” Joe asks.

  “He says you still owe him a couple of months’ wages.” Alfred’s voice is clear and strong. “He came round yesterday looking for you. I said I didn’t know where you were. And I don’t know why the damned phones aren’t working either. He’s a good man, Joe, you can’t afford to lose him. What the heck is going on?”

  Nothing, Joe thinks. He’d paid Clayton as much as he could, a good chunk of the garage sale cash went to him when he came begging, his three kids hanging out the car windows wanting to give Uncle Joe a hug. Crafty son of a bitch. His face grows hot and he loosens the neck of his hoodie, welcomes the shock of cold air at his throat. It’s easier to start a business than it is to stop one. It’s a voracious machine that needs to be constantly fed. People become dependent on you for their mortgage and car payments, their kids’ hockey careers, their ex-wives’ support; their various habits. What comes out at the end is such a small turd for the number of hours, the amount of effort, the uncertainty. The only people who profit from a small business are lawyers, accountants and lending institutions.

  “I’ve got to go,” Joe says.

  “Yes, this must be costing money.”

  “I’ll call around eight tonight,” Joe promises. He’s seen a Shoppers drugstore nearby. He will buy more time for the cell there.

  “The girl is going to take me down to X-ray now,” Alfred says.

  “X-ray? What for? Let me talk to her, will you?”

  There’s a muffled riff of sound, and then the woman says, “Mr. Beaudry?”

  “What’s this about my father needing an X-ray?”

  “A chest X-ray. The doctor ordered one. Your father has a bit of a temperature. When you call this evening, would you please call through the desk? The supervisor will be there. She’d like to talk to you.”

  “Your chest?” Joe says when Alfred comes back on the telephone.

  “Yah. Smoke eighty-some years, what else could it be?”

  “You should have said something sooner about wanting brandy, Dad. I’d have brought you some.”

  “I didn’t want it sooner.”

  He’ll get in touch with the liquor store in Osborne Village, they’ll deliver. There’s still enough room on the one credit card to make that happen.

  “Let me see what I can do,” Joe says.

  “Good. I’ll have a shot of it before going to bed, maybe it’ll warm me up.”

  “Talk to you later, Dad,” Joe says.

  He’s barely pocketed the cell when Pete is at his side. “We’re not working today. Probably we won’t get any more hours.”

  “You saw the boss?” Joe scans the parking lot for the man’s SUV.

  “He’s not in yet. That’s how come I know. He’d be here if we was to work. After you left last night the university kids came by. They’re done writing exams. It’s supposed to warm up this week, and as soon as it does, the boss will hire his son and his pals. Same as last year.” He grins, reaming the space where his front teeth should be with the tip of his tongue.

  The windows across the front of the store reflect the sky, Pete’s truck, which looks cumbersome and top-heavy with its unpainted plywood cabana, the solitary lawn chair set beside it, Joe and Pete. Joe is a head taller, and near to ten years older, but he looks younger. He can’t see into the store to know whether or not the lights are on at the customer service desk.

  “What do you say I buy you a coffee?” Pete says.

  Joe concentrates on Pete’s forehead to avoid looking at the wet space between his teeth. He doesn’t particularly want to spend time with Pete, but going for a coffee will delay his return to the Meridian and the decision about what to do next.

  “You’re on,” he says.

  He waits as Pete folds up the lawn chair, unlocks the aluminum door on the cabana and tosses the chair onto what appears to be a narrow cot covered in a red blanket. He shuts the door quickly but not before Joe has seen an assortment of tools hung on the walls on either side of the small window above the cot. “Home sweet home,” Pete says with an apologetic grin.
<
br />   “You live in that?”

  “Sometimes.” Pete turns away toward Albert Street and Joe notices for the first time his bowlegged gait. His jeans are too long and his heels have worn holes through the backs of both pant legs. Joe catches up to him and together they wait on the boulevard for a break in the traffic.

  Pete casts him a sideways glance that takes him in from head to foot. “Where’re you from?”

  “Winnipeg,” Joe says with reluctance, knowing that he’s opened the door to the questions Pete’s been burning to ask.

  “So, you’re visiting, or what?”

  “Visiting,” Joe replies and waits for the next question. Why would a person in his situation be working as casual labour? But Pete remains silent as they cross the street and approach Robin’s Donuts. Two women shiver with cold as they perch on the edges of wrought-iron chairs on either side of the door, smoking cigarettes.

  “Don’t you say a thing,” one of the women warns Pete with mock severity, her eyes hidden behind white-framed sunglasses, her mouth a wilted pucker of rose.

  “Don’t need to,” Pete says and smiles at her. “Amanda here is trying for a Guinness World Record for the number of times a person has tried to quit,” he tells Joe.

  The smell of coffee and the din of male voices in Robin’s Donuts are familiar. Men of all ages are crammed thigh to thigh around the small square tables, just as they would be in Pauline’s diner at this time of the day. As Joe makes his way to the back of the room several of them give him the once-over before returning to their newspapers and laptops, their heated opinions about what they’d like to do to a pedophile who has abducted a young boy at a bus depot in Brandon, Manitoba, and is reported to be heading west.

  Joe finds a table near the rear of the coffee shop, adjacent to a window, while Pete takes his place in the lineup at the counter. Where once he would have faced the early morning crowd, Joe chooses to turn his back to it, staring at the window, opaque with mist, obliterating sight of the strip mall beyond. A chest X-ray, he thinks. He looks down at his hands spread across the table, fingers stiff and the knuckles enlarged and scuffed from the recent marathon of getting rid of what amounted to fifty-one years of his and his father’s life. He imagines Alfred’s hands, his father’s fingers shiny with slime as he tears the entrails from a fish. Look here, Joe, our supper. Joe smells kerosene and wood smoke, the time of the yellow canoe.

  Pete makes his way slowly among the tables, his eyes fixed on the tray he carries, intent on not spilling the coffees. He unloads the brimming mugs and two bagels with exaggerated efficiency. “At your service.”

  “Hey, what’s this?” Joe asks and indicates the bagel, the container of cream cheese tucked in beside it on the plate.

  “You don’t eat bagels?” Pete looks worried.

  “Sure, but you said just coffee. Thanks, buddy.”

  “The tip’s not included.” Pete grins. The gum between his missing teeth is purplish and swollen. Joe busies himself with the sugar and cream.

  Pete takes a wad of papers from his chest pocket, unfolds them carefully and smooths them flat against the table. “Take a look,” he says and slides them across the table to Joe.

  On the top page are drawings of boxes of various shapes and sizes, dimensions neatly noted. On the next page, there’s a drawing of a garden arbour inset with a bench, and again, all the measurements are noted. In shaded block printing at the bottom are the words, “Designed by Peter Lavallee.” The final page proves to be a hand-printed list of building materials and the cost of each item.

  “I made a grape arbour for a lady last year and the word got out. So far I’ve got orders for three more and half a dozen planters,” Pete says. “Over there, in Lakeside,” he says and nods in the right direction.

  “You can actually make these things cheaper than the Chinese?”

  “Better, not cheaper. And I make them to order, whatever size they want,” Pete says. “One lady took me down the street to look at an arbour in someone’s yard, told me she wants this and that different, higher, wider. Mine are stronger, too. And don’t cost much more than what you see at the garden places.” Pete’s voice is strong with conviction.

  “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.” Joe slides the papers back across the table to him.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You and me, we could put this order together inside two days.”

  “Me?” Joe says.

  “Yah. I seen you work.”

  “Oh, god, no. I’m not going to be here long enough.”

  “I’d go halfers with you on the profit. You’ll make a couple of hundred bucks. That should be worth anyone’s time to stick around.”

  Pete said you’ll make a couple of hundred bucks, the same way more polished men might have said, a couple of hundred thousand. A couple of million. Among the men who had the time to frequent a place like this, there weren’t any who would not have relished being able to say a couple of hundred thousand. The men around him were likely grease monkeys from lube joints, mechanics, farmers, grocery store clerks, or at most, managers.

  “Why give away half the profit when you can have it all?” he asks Pete. He notices that a large man sitting at a nearby table is taking an interest in their conversation.

  Pete dumps sugar in his coffee, stirs, empties several containers of cream into it, again stirs, while his eyes flit nervously about the room. “I only got my dad’s garage for two days,” he says finally. “That’s where I build them. I can’t do it by myself in just two days. And I got deposits for the orders, but only about half of what I need to buy all the supplies.”

  “And you’d want me to put in the other half? I don’t think so.”

  “Look, I only do cash,” Pete says quickly. “You could come with me when I deliver. I use a trailer, and I’ll need help loading and unloading. Them things are heavy as hell. Everyone pays cash, that’s the deal. I’ll pay you out right on the spot. We work two days and deliver them one night, and it’s over.”

  When he sees Joe is not convinced, he says, “I can take you around, show you some of the things I’ve built.”

  “Go for it, Pete,” the overweight man at the nearby table says sotto voce, and then to Joe, sending him a look, “You should go and see what he can do.”

  An unlikely shill, Joe thinks and nods to Pete as he gets up to leave. As he heads for the door he sees movement in the mirror behind the counter—himself. Not the trim and broad-shouldered person he knows himself to be, in a Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt and chino pants, what he’d come to think of as being his uniform. He sees an unkempt man whose features are dark and puffy from lack of sleep. His black leather jacket makes him look defensive and stiff. A loser, he thinks with some chagrin, and then a couple of hundred bucks would help to get him to McMurray. It’s a quicker means to an end than slogging away for hours on the minimum.

  “Hey, you going to show me, or not?” he calls to Pete over his shoulder.

  Pete leaps from his chair and is halfway to the door when he stops short, returns to the table, wraps serviettes around the bagels and stuffs them into the side pockets of his vest.

  Moments later they’re driving along a wide street lined with elm trees whose branches are a lime-green canopy above them. Near the end of a block Pete pulls in close to the curb and nods, “That, there.” He inches the truck forward so Joe can look over a fence and into the side yard of a stately looking buff stone house towering over a corner lot. Its striped green awnings are down, shading windows, and anyone who might be at a window watching. A beat-up truck like this, two scruffy guys casing the neighbourhood—he’d call the police.

  Pete points at an octagonal cedar gazebo in the yard. “I built that. And the fence. The fence darn near took me all of one summer. Because of the trees, I had to do most of the postholes by hand.”

  As they turn at the corner and move down the side street Joe whistles at the length and height of the cedar fence. The gate is a full-size wo
oden door with narrow glass panels through which he can see the turned-up garden beyond. At various intervals and heights along the side of the fence, squares have been cut into the boards and framed.

  “What are the holes for?” he asks.

  “The dog,” Pete says and chuckles. “So the dog can see what’s going by. That was my idea.”

  “That must have set them back a few bucks,” Joe says, thinking of the cost of the modest fence he hired a company to build along the back of the house on Arlington Street.

  “It didn’t cost them anything but the lumber,” Pete says. “That’s my dad’s place.”

  Within moments they’re back on Albert Street and going past Canadian Tire. There are several vehicles parked on the lot now, the manager’s black SUV in its usual spot. Joe thinks to say they should stop and see what’s up, but Pete revs the engine and they lumber through the green light at the intersection, the small truck swaying precariously beneath the weight of the cabana as they gradually gain speed, their destination the ring road at the end of Albert Street that leads to the Trans-Canada Highway and a Home Depot store.

  As they pass the Sunrise Mall, Joe sees Laurie looking tall and fit in a beige and brown sweatsuit, her coppery froth of hair gathered on top of her head and bobbing with her energetic stride. She has his bag lunch in her hand and he concludes that she’s heading for Canadian Tire to bring it to him.

  “As far as my old man goes, I can’t do anything right.” Pete has been going on about his father ever since they left the Lakeside District. “He’s been on my case my whole life.”