Early in the new year Joe had a job to do. He had to go out to Vye’s and take apart the furnace pipe and put on a new one. He had promised to do this and had never gotten about to do it, and Vye had asked Rita if he had forgotten. Rita came home and asked him if he had forgotten. She looked at him as he stood with his back to her.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m going over tonight.”
In fact, he was going over that night. The worst of it was that he had no faith in himself concerning this. If he did not do the job he would be looked upon as ridiculous. If he looked ridiculous perhaps Rita would think it was because he had quit drinking and had gone strange. If he did not do it he would feel less than himself, and yet, once he had done it, he felt something would happen that could make him regret it.
Joe hated these thoughts, and came to the conclusion that no matter if he had felt injured over something, that didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered at the moment was that he had told them he would go and fix the furnace.
He took Milly with him and got to the house about eight-thirty. What happened was totally different than Joe had expected. Part of the reason was the fact that the house, off on a side street, did not look inside the way Joe pictured it would. Besides this, it had the faded walls and small knick-knacks and calendars that Joe had always associated with his youth. Vye met him at the door and welcomed him as if he’d long wanted him to come to the house and was just waiting for an opportunity like this. He also followed him downstairs and stood behind him as he worked, talking kindly, with deep empathy.
“Well – why haven’t you been to the curling club again?” Vye asked. And his voice sounded genuinely sorry for something.
Joe, at that moment, was standing on an old block of wood and trying to loosen the pipe, and could not answer. Then he said, “I was pretty busy.”
“Oh – busy – you and Rita have to get out more.”
Joe worked very quickly, and with the dexterity of a man who is ingenious at what he does and needs little to work with. If something went wrong, Joe would usually find a way to fix it, and never be stumped when most others were.
Milly was sitting on the oil barrel holding his emergency light up to the pipe. Whenever Vye spoke, she would look at him out the corner of her eye, and then shift her eyes back to Joe’s hands, which were labouring to get the pipe in place. Then she would look back at Vye again, then she looked at Joe’s right hand. His thumb had been sewn back on because it had been cut off on a saw.
Vye asked Milly if she would like anything to drink.
“Pepsi,” Milly said, without taking her eyes off Joe’s hands.
“Don’t be rude,” Joe said.
“Please,” Milly said.
When Vye left, Milly whispered: “He’s wearing his slippers in the basement.”
“That’s up to him,” Joe said.
“Rita told us never to do it,” Milly sniffed self-righteously.
Milly was waiting for Joe to tell Vye about the deer he had shot while she was in the basket on his back. But Joe didn’t. She found it strange that he didn’t. She continued to hold the light and looked at his hands, and then at his feet, which were up on their toes on a block of wood, his bootlaces untied.
When Vye came downstairs with her Pepsi, Milly moved the light and shone it at his slippers, and then quickly up at his funny face, and then back on his slippers again.
“Put the light back up here,” Joe said, gruffly, and back the light went as quickly as possible on his hands.
“Thank you, Milly,” Joe said.
When Joe had finished, Milly jumped off the oil barrel and ran to the stairs before either of them, and disappeared up them. Then she ran back down and grabbed her father by the arm, while Vye was talking to him about the furnace. She kept yanking at him to go, and Joe kept telling her to be quiet because Vye was talking. Vye looked down at her and smiled again with kindness, and every time Joe went to pat her on the head she would step just out of reach.
“Let’s go, ’kay?” Milly said. “Let’s go, ’kay?”
When she finally got them to the kitchen, Milly was still wrestling with her father, standing back on her heels and pulling on his arms.
Joe then kept trying to ward off Vye who was writing him a cheque. This to him was the main point, the one which he was readying himself for. Vye tried to stuff the cheque into Joe’s pocket as if Joe were a child. He did not want to take money, and Vye was just as convinced that he should take it – in fact, that he must take it.
But Joe would not take it They stood looking at each other for a moment; Joe leaning against the counter with a stooped expression. “No no – I don’t want cher money,” he said.
“But I have to pay you,” Vye said.
While they were speaking, Milly, tired of yanking on her father, began to walk about, as if she had now forgotten about home completely. After a moment they heard a loud sneeze and she came back with her face covered in powder, holding a compact in her hand. “Look at Mom’s compact,” she said.
“No, no – that’s not yer mother’s,” Vye said.
He looked at Joe, and Joe looked quickly away, which made Vye put his hand up and cough, “No, no,” he said, “that’s not Rita’s.”
“I know it ain’t,” Joe said softly. “That’s an end to it,” he said, and then cleared his throat, while Milly looked up at them both with powder on her face, busily scratching her bum.
Then Vye smiled and looked sorrowfully about. All Joe could think of was the compact and the notion that everything had to be refuted. What was worse than the compact being there, was that who it belonged to had to be clarified.
In fact, when Joe left the house and carried Milly down the steps, he was certain it wasn’t Rita’s. But when he got to his lane and turned down it, he was certain that it was.
Shortly after this, Rita fell with a load of wash and hit her eye on the corner of the washing machine. She did not want to show Joe the eye because she was worried he would take her to the hospital and people might think he had beaten her.
She packed a face-cloth with ice and went to sit on the edge of the couch. A woman, when she is worried, will either sit on the edge of a couch with her feet together and her hand on her chin, or lean back against one arm with her feet tucked up under her. A man, when he is worried, will generally move something, tap or pace, or suddenly come to a halt in the centre of the room, as if someone has just thrown water on him.
The next day when parents brought their children, they saw the eye, bloodshot and bruised. Rita was going about as always, laughing and talking, a cigarette going in the ashtray. Adele was sitting at the table eating her breakfast, looking suspiciously at everyone, sneering at the kids, and telling them to line up and not all rush towards the toy-box at the same time. Adele this morning wore her hair in two Indian braids, her little face whiter than a ghost, and her nose looking sharper. She made no comment on Rita’s condition. Milly, who was running about trying to get dressed and looking for things she was holding on to, and for things she was already wearing, kept yelling: “Take a look at Rita’s shiner!”
A rumour started that Joe had caught Rita at the club with Vye, and slapped Rita in the face, and would no longer allow her to curl.
It was January and Vera had trouble feeling good Her throat was sore and she had a cold. Some mornings she did not even feel like dressing but she got up in the cold room, in the dark, and, standing naked, turned on the small light over her head. The weather was bad and they were cut off from everything. When they looked one way they could see the bay, covered in ice. When she went up to town, with its cenotaph and store windows, she only got more depressed.
They met some Acadian friends and went with them to their winter carnival further down the coast. Vera had dressed up to be suddenly Acadian, wearing an Acadian pin, and traditional Acadian dress. More than ever at this time, she disowned her own culture and wanted to belong with the Acadians who she felt were victims like herself. However, the
night of the winter carnival, she and Nevin found themselves alone and ignored. People seemed to want to prove how uninhibited their culture was. And when people tell you that they are not restrained or inhibited, and have authenticity, they are also suggesting that you are restrained and inhibited and lack that which is authentic.
Vera felt sad that night because she had read all of Maillet, and listened to Edith Butler, and Nevin had joined in the causes of French equality and simply assumed he knew all about the issues. With her little pin that supported French culture, the sleigh ride they took, and all of the songs, she simply assumed she too would belong.
As for Nevin, as long as he was with Vera, he felt he was speaking out with the right people against the right things, for the right reasons at the right time.
One night Vera left the house for a walk. She went for a walk along the beach and looked at the lights across the bay. The road was dark, the fields above her were frozen and the trees made wretched sounds. It was as if she would be able to stick her face in a fire and not feel it. She looked all alone, like a scarecrow standing in the middle of nowhere. She had forgotten her hat, and she stood there for a long time. Out on the highway, at one of the houses they were having a party. There was music from a guitar which reached all the way to where she was, and she could hear screeching, and now and then a door slam, and then loud laughter.
And as she turned back along the road, she stumbled to one side and fell on her stomach, knocking the wind from her. She lifted herself proudly, and brushed the snow off. Far away she could just see the slanted window of her old farmhouse with its yellow light, but tears blurred her eyes.
The doctor had Joe take him by truck and then by Skidoo to Vera’s. Vera and Nevin had been snowed in and she was sick, and Thelma had telephoned the doctor. Dr. Hennessey had delivered them all – that is, Vera, Ralphie, Rita, and Milly and Adele. He had delivered Myhrra and her ex-husband also. Old fashioned and an anachronistic thinker, he had one old-fashioned trait which helped her out – he made house calls.
Vera and Nevin lived about fourteen miles out of town, on the down-river side. The doctor’s house was on the opposite side of the road, and from his upstairs he looked over the bay, a mile and a half away. He could see Vera’s land from his window. He could see the top of her barn and the field, and the lane that led up to her house.
As they came up to the house, the doctor – dressed in a woollen cap and old blue navy sweater with his bow-tie, a pair of bright pea-soup gumboots – took out a chew of plug, walked about the Skidoo, kicking the runners.
Nevin sat by his big woodstove in the kitchen with his hands in the pockets of his corduroy pants. Vera was almost as tall as Ralphie, very thin, with blue eyes and hazel-coloured hair. She wore a pair of black slacks that dragged below her bum, and an old orange-coloured shirt, stuck with woodchips and showing her naked chest bone.
The whole kitchen was dark and spooky because of the styrofoam sheets Nevin used to insulate the walls. Vera began to cough as she stood there, and then looked at them proudly.
It was as if now that they were in the woods they must experience everything, that is, cold and miserable conditions. Joe stood off to the side, smiling – with his eyes swollen because he had had no glasses on while riding his Skidoo, and wearing an old Skidoo suit that was torn at both legs, his boots covered with snow.
There was snow on the doctor’s woollen cap, which hung over the left side of his head, and covered his left ear.
“Hello hello hello,” he said impatiently.
As soon as he came into the kitchen he looked out of place, where he would not look out of place in any other rural kitchen in the Maritimes.
Nevin was reading a manual on pumps and plumbing, and stared up at Joe. Joe smiled, and tried to light a wet cigarette.
The doctor spit into the stove and opened the damper.
“How’s Clare?” Vera asked.
“Clare … Clare … Clare,” the doctor said, as if he were trying to remember her name. “Oh – good good.”
Then he got suspicious for a moment as if someone might tell him something he did not want to hear. It was a cloudy day, and heavy storm-clouds sat above the farm, drifts of snow lay against the kitchen window that looked out over the pond. Some far away woods were seen.
“The main thing,” he said, “is how are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just got the flu.”
“Well, come in and let me look at you – in here,” the doctor said brashly, as if he knew exactly where everything was already. And, saying this, he turned, stepped over a pail, and made his way into the other room by another door.
Vera, without looking at anyone, followed him.
“What?” they could hear the doctor saying. “Don’t talk about chores – you don’t know what a chore is. Chores – a few years ago now – heh heh – I mean you didn’t call them chores a few years ago. …” Here he cleared his throat as if he was confused. “Having your period?”
And then their voices became muffled.
Meanwhile the whole house was in turmoil. The plumbing was broken, and Ralphie was there trying to fix it Joe stood in the entranceway, letting snow drip from his boots, and now and then he glanced at Nevin.
“Here,” Joe said, unzipping his coat. “I’ll go down and see if there’s something wrong.”
Joe walked about in the cellar, looking at the beams.
“What do you think, Ralphie?” he whispered.
The air was cold and stale and when they breathed, steam came out of their mouths.
“I tried to put a new pipe on the pump here – I had the motor running – but I still can’t get it to run.”
“Who put this one in?” Joe asked.
“I did,” Ralphie said.
“Ah, well – no, look” And he took the wrench from Ralphie’s hand. “What do you think?” Joe said, undoing the back of the pump one screw at a time with his huge fingers. “Schooners win tonight or Tigers?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was on a team once,” Joe said. “Left wing. But that was the time I was all drunk – no one wanted me about One night, I got a plan. I took a gun and put it in my pants, went skating about. I don’t know why I did it. I knew a lad from across the river was out to dump me, one of the Monk brothers. Well, I waited for him. I could see him, like out of the corner of my eye, coming in, like when I was in the corner, and soon as he was near me, I slipped under him and said, That’s enough a that’ And took out my gun – and shot him.”
“You shot him?” Ralphie said, with an irrepressible grin on his face.
“Only with a blank,” Joe said. “That was sort of the end of my hockey, though.” He smiled quickly, and then coughed gently.
When Joe stopped speaking, and the breath stopped coming out of his mouth, it was very silent. Ralphie sat upon his haunches watching him clean the pump.
“Now,” Joe said, “case back on here – we need more tools – the best way ta do this is for me to take the Skidoo and go back out to the truck and get some and be back, and do this here.”
They left the cellar, and came out of the hatch by the rear pantry door.
“I’m going to get my tools,” Joe said. “I’ll be back.” “You don’t have to,” Vera said.
Joe clomped about in the kitchen. After Vera spoke she went past him into a room at the opposite end of the kitchen. This was done self-consciously as if all eyes were on her – and besides this, there were strangers walking about in her kitchen as if they had come here to watch her.
In the living room a mahogany table, with a white tablecloth folded upon it, sat in the winter light, and a basket filled with ironed clothes lay beneath it. All her china cups in the cabinet shone cold in the winter light. In that room there was a scent of fabric and snow.
Joe looked over at Nevin and smiled, coughed, and looked about. Nevin had asked him to come and see about a horse one afternoon in the fall. The wind had been blowing from the trees and
everyone in the yard was drunk. They had all gotten drunk, as if the process of horse-trading must be carried on when you were too blind to know what you were doing. Clay Everette Madgill was there, with his horse, and Nevin was walking about it. Vera was standing by the back door, looking out at them from the wooden porch.
It was no horse to buy. It had had a heart attack hauling the year before, but had survived. Joe smiled when Nevin said he wanted Joe’s opinion on it, because Joe knew instinctively that no matter what he said, Nevin, walking about the yard with Clay Everette, was already determined to buy it. And he knew also, before it happened, that they would blame him for something – or that they would get angry with him if he tried to talk Nevin out of it. The wind came down on the top of Joe’s hat, and blew up under his coat sleeves. There was a smell of ice in the mud, and the dooryard looked dead. The trees that separated this farm from Allain Garret’s were clear and hard. The horse, left hind hoof turned, breathed somberly.
“I’ll buy it,” Nevin said. He smiled. Clay Everette nodded solemnly, and Nevin proudly walked out to the barn.
For a month afterwards the horse plodded out of the barn across the field and out onto the highway, where it walked along the road to its old home. And every two days Vera would go up, and coax it back. The first storm, it was hit by a truck hauling peat moss, and lay in front of the doctor’s house, breathing in and out, and trying every little while to stand up.
“Well – are we going home?” Hennessey said to Joe after he wrote Vera a prescription and told her to rest in bed.
“I want to get their pump going,” Joe said.
Nevin insisted that he didn’t have to do it, that he would do it himself, but Joe insisted that he did. When Joe was in the cellar he’d seen the work done on it already – and realized that someone from down river had been hired. Joe knew that he had charged them a lot of money probably, and had put all his pipes on wrong.
Nevin looked as if nothing was wrong with his house, and in fact everything was the way he wanted it to be. He had just applied for a grant from the government to build a windmill – something which was suddenly considered by everyone to be totally innovative and new.
Nights Below Station Street Page 13
