A Year of Lesser
Page 22
He circles the edge of the crowd. He knows a few people, not many. He stands beside an older couple. The man has grey hair, a large nose. Johnny recognizes him as his old high school principal. Johnny used to be good friends with this man’s son. The man turns as Johnny attempts to sidle away.
“Johnny Fehr?”
Johnny nods and grins. Shakes hands with the couple and then the salesman side of him takes over. He’s good at this. Chats comfortably with his old principal, who must remember him as a scoundrel, a poor student. There is a vague memory of kicking the headlights out on this man’s car. Those were angry times.
Johnny asks about their son, recalling that he was a bit of a writer. He mentions this and the older man laughs politely, dismissing the fact. Says his son is a teacher. Has four children. Then Johnny talks about himself, about the youth centre he runs, his new baby, his job at OK Feeds. He gives the impression that his life is solid and for a moment he believes it himself. Believes that when he goes home tonight he will find Loraine and Rebecca and Chris waiting for him.
Later, driving away from the gathering, he feels full of goodwill.
A week passes. During this time Johnny does not hear from Loraine. Chris is absent from work; he just stops coming. Johnny drives by Loraine’s late one night and catches a glimpse of someone standing in the light by the window. He thinks maybe it’s Loraine holding Rebecca but he can’t be sure. He drives to his land and fires up the stove. Heats up a can of noodle soup. Eats it out of the pot. He has discovered the water from the old well that stands beside the machine shed. The pump was rusty and unused but a few shots of oil eliminated the squeaks and after several gushes of brown the water flowed clear and cold. He goes now to clean the pot. The night is humid. He strips and puts his head under the pump. Washes his hair. Soaps his armpits, his chest, his crotch. He stands naked, swatting mosquitoes, towelling himself dry with a clean T-shirt. Lightning dangles in the west. Muffled thunder.
The storm hits after midnight. Johnny wakes, his fingers and toes rigid. The lightning and thunder are inside his tent. The wind and rain flatten him. Within fifteen minutes he is lying in a pool of water. He scrambles out into the rain and runs to his car. He finds shelter there, though it is stuffy and the windows fog up. He removes his wet T-shirt and underwear. His clean clothes are in the car trunk, so he must huddle on the seat, shivering. He idles the car and blows heat around until his head drops and he sleeps. He wakes an hour later with a sore neck and an erection. He was dreaming of Loraine and Chris; they were making love and Johnny was watching.
Johnny believes that Loraine will come looking for him. And when she does he will neither gloat nor mock her. There is a lot of room inside Johnny for everyone’s foibles. He is a trusting man; he feels full of luck. Love too. He used to lie beside Loraine at night and listen to her sleep and he would offer thanks for her, touching lightly at her knuckles, her toes, her knees, her hipbones, her belly, her ribs, the mole on her neck. “Thanks,” he would whisper and his body would tremble with impatience and delight.
He realized that this had little to do with sex. If she never again allowed him to enter her, he would still worship her. He imagined her as a vessel full of seeds, a ripe and lovely fruit perhaps, and many times he opened his wide mouth and tried to fit her head, her hands, her feet, inside him. During those moments his body ached.
Johnny finds that his waking hours follow the pattern of the sun. He is beginning to enjoy this: the early rising, the priming of the stove, the blisters produced by the work with the pump and the axe, the small fires before bedtime, and even the digging of a latrine, a hole deep enough to bury his own shit. Everything is simplified and labour-filled. There is no shortage of time. He goes to work, avoids the office, stays out of the way of Lesser and its awful pity. Does his shopping in other towns. He fancies himself a settler of sorts, though he misses TV.
And then, on a Wednesday night, ten days after she asked him to leave, Loraine comes to find Johnny. Though the daylight has barely disappeared, Johnny has already taken shelter in his tent. He hears a car pull up. A door opens. Footsteps, and someone is standing on the other side of the thin nylon.
“Johnny?” A whisper.
Johnny unzips the flap and sees Loraine and the baby. Rebecca is sleeping; a log in her arms. “Climb in,” Johnny says. The hair rises on his arms as Loraine crouches past him and brushes up against his waist. She sits cross-legged at the far end where Johnny usually lays his head. She’s a shadow. Johnny lights a cigarette and for a few seconds the warmth of the flame becomes a common focus. The flare also offers Johnny a view of Loraine’s face; fatigue there, dark eyes, heaviness. Is this the woman he loves? He leans closer as if to identify her. He perceives grief. The match goes out.
“Welcome,” Johnny says.
“Chris is gone,” Loraine responds. Her mouth is slow, full of rocks.
Johnny realizes now that her grief has little to do with him. A tug of disappointment. Resentment towards Chris. And then, as Loraine sobs and snuffles, Johnny begins to understand that children can kill you. He reaches out, takes the sleeping Rebecca. His daughter. She’s a foreign object. Has so little to do with who he is, his own private anguish. He wonders at Loraine’s lack of self these days, at how consumed she is by Chris and Rebecca. The baby arcs her back and opens her mouth. A lazy yawn, a grasping of paws. Johnny pats her and shushes softly.
“He left a week ago,” Loraine says. “None of his friends are talking. The police think I’m an idiot. Kids that age often run, they say. Then they come back. They always come back. I went to Winnipeg last night. Drove for hours around downtown, hoping to see Chris. Nothing. Rebecca screamed and hollered. I hollered back until finally the little thing slept.”
Johnny kisses the baby’s head. Again.
“I keep thinking he’s dead,” Loraine says. “Can you help?”
Johnny wishes he were as tiny as Rebecca right now. Then he could lie in Loraine’s arms. Burrow beneath her shirt and come up weary from excess.
“Can you go find him?” she asks.
“Okay,” Johnny says. He reaches out a hand in the dark and finds Loraine’s face. Touches lightly at her eyebrows and cheeks. Traces her mouth and trails his fingers down her neck. Her breathing is more relaxed now. Relief reveals itself in the settling of her shoulders, the push of her head against his hand.
“You poor thing,” she whispers. “You shouldn’t have to live like this.”
“It’s good for me,” Johnny says. “I’m spoiled.”
In that small space they lean into each other, press noses on necks, and feel the baby stir at their bellies. It is a good thing, Johnny thinks. This. Then Loraine gathers up Rebecca and before she goes, kisses Johnny on the cheek; a moist spot there. Johnny listens to Loraine leave and tries to settle in. The ground is hard beneath him. He turns, seeking a hollow for his hip. The wind blows. The trees move. A car passes on the gravel road, spitting stones into the ditch.
History, for Johnny, is what he can remember. And he always remembers most vividly just before sliding into sleep. Tonight though he keeps shifting between what is real and what is dream and it requires all his attention to separate the two. There is Phil Barkman’s hooded blue penis, shrivelled and cute. Melody, pregnant again. Baby Rebecca, talking in tongues. Charlene, swimming in a pool of Hiram Walker, face down, a pickled pig. Himself, a field mouse being attacked by a small nighthawk—he scurries into a hole. And finally, there is Loraine, standing far off across a barren field, beckoning to him. He crosses the field but the going is slow, the land is rough and full of clumps and furrows. Burned stubble appears here and there. His shoes turn black. He fears that by the time he reaches the far edge, Loraine will have disappeared. Still, he presses on.
About the Author
DAVID BERGEN won the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel The Time in Between. He is the author of four other novels: The Matter with Morris, his newest work; The Retreat, winner of the McNally Robinson Book
of the Year Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction; The Case of Lena S., winner of the Carol Shields Award; and See the Child, which The Globe and Mail compared to the work of Richard Ford and John Updike. Bergen lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Copyright
A Year of Lesser
Copyright © 1996 by David Bergen.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40291-0
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
First published in an original trade paperback edition by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd: 1996
This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2010
Excerpt from THE GOLD CELL by Sharon Olds. Copyright © 1981 by Sharon Olds. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
Two chapters of this novel, “Saved” and “Eggs, New-laid,” were first published in Prairie Fire.
The financial assistance of the Canada Council and the Manitoba Art Council is gratefully acknowledged.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bergen, David, 1957–
A year of Lesser / David Bergen.
“A Phyllis Bruce book.”
ISBN 978-1-55468-873-9
I. Title.
PS8553.E665Y43 2010 C813′.54 C2010-903097-4
HC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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