Heroes

by Ray Robertson

  Smith leaned back in his chair, gave a little that’s-all-there-is-to-tell shrug and half-smile.

  “That’s it?” Bayle said.

  “That’s it.”

  “Losing your faith: it was just that simple?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Smith said.

  Bayle put the yearbook on his lap; flipped until he came to a picture of Smith in a group shot of the International Student Christian Fellowship, UWO chapter. He put his finger on the picture and shoved the book at Smith.

  “The yearbook and that picture are both from first year,” Smith said. “Before my Age of Enlightenment.”

  “But it’s you, right?”

  “Of course, it’s me. What’s your point?”

  Bayle closed the yearbook. Leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes.

  “So what’s your story, Bayle?”

  Bayle didn’t answer.

  “Well?” Smith said.

  Eyes open, “Biggest day of a young scholar’s life tomorrow, right?” Bayle said. “And I guess that Aquinas isn’t going to read itself.”

  41

  BOY-MAN IN a bubble.

  Boy-man: Bayle.

  Bubble: lip-blown (but by imbibing, not the usual way, by blowing); moderately impenetratable; and, if a constant source of eighty-proof bubble-juice continues to go down the gullet, enough of not others and other things outside the bubble to make moment to moment kind of all right. Or at least slightly more so than it might be if non-bubbled otherwise.

  And, for the occasional diversion, five salt peanuts floating on their backs on an undisturbed draft beer lake with an ear tuned to the conversation at the bar a few empty tables away.

  “C’mon, Stan, give me a beer. On the house. Bitch was on crack and stole my coat. Right here, right on your premises.”

  “Was that a new coat, Jimmy?”

  “Did I say it was a new coat, Lloyd? Did I? No, I didn’t. It was my old coat, the same coat I’ve been wearing ever since I don’t know when. The same coat I’ve never had any reason to complain of. Does it gotta be a new coat for Stan here to compensate me for a crime committed at his very own establishment? All I’m asking for is one bottle of beer. Aside from the financial loss, that coat had great sentimental value to me, you know.”

  Before Jimmy has a chance to again relate how his father and his father before him proudly wore the raggedy-ass Sears and Roebuck castoff everybody around the bar knows he got for free at the Salvation Army at College and Spadina a month before, Stan Knott, owner and proprietor of Knott’s Place, opens the glass-covered door of the refrigerator behind the bar and pulls out and cracks open a Labatt Ice.

  Setting the bottle down on the bar but not letting go when the old man eagerly latches onto it, “One beer, Jimmy,” Knott says. “And not one more sob-story about drug addicts stealing your flea-bitten coat, no tales about long gone relatives, and for Christ’s sake drink it by yourself, over by the juke box.”

  With eyes only for his beer, Jimmy rapid-yeses like a chicken at its feed and motors over to a table in the far corner as fast as his spindly legs can carry him.

  The only one left standing at the bar, Lloyd — another daytime drinker with a varicose soul but with a dependable source of disability cheques that make beer-begging anecdotes unnecessary — asks, “How can you tell if somebody’s on crack, Stan?”

  Knott opened up the place at noon and it’s only a quarter-to-three now, but he peels the cellophane off the day’s second pack of Rothman’s Unfiltered, ignoring the bold black warning on the package that kindly cautions that smoking could be hazardous to the health of his baby. Lit up, he snaps shut the lid of his silver lighter and inhales deep like a suffocating man taking in pure oxygen. At an even six-foot and three hundred and twenty-five pounds, he doesn’t need to employ a bouncer.

  “Anybody that sucks my cock without my having to pay them,” Knott says. “That’s how you can tell if somebody’s on crack.”

  Lloyd snorts into his pint of draft beer and adjusts his torn galosh on the foot rail underneath the bar. “The Price is Right” soundlessly plays on the fuzzy T.V. hanging over the pool table. Bob Barker can’t give away the self-cleaning ovens and sparkling sets of golf clubs fast enough.

  Knott glances up at the television, flicks his ash into an empty draft glass, looks out the window. Through a driving, freezing November rain he watches the Queen Street steetcar stop out front taking some on, letting some off. Another streetcar will be back in another ten minutes to do the exact same thing. Knott will be standing just about where he’s standing right now to watch the whole glorious affair happen. And happen again. And again.

  Back to the bubble. (One of the chief reasons for diversions being temporary relief from desiring any more diversions.)

  But the bubble needs blowing. And blowing means more bubble-juice. Must feed the bubble, Bayle.

  “Same as before, Professor?” Knott says, taking the empty beer pitcher and shotglass Bayle has carried to the bar.

  Bayle nods into his shirt and pulls out a ball of bills and fistful of loonies, twonies, and other, less-valuable coins, spilling the entire clattering sum onto the bartop. Knott counts out how much Bayle owes him for another pitcher and shot of C.C. and pushes the rest back across the bar.

  Refilling Bayle’s jug from a tap beside the cash register, “You might want to think about putting your change inside your wallet, Professor,” Knott says.

  Knott’s been calling Bayle “Professor” ever since the first time the normally quiet/occasionally berserk but always generously tipping Bayle came into his place utterly wasted and alone one night near closing time a year or so ago and matter-of-factly announced, when asked by one of the old boys at the bar what he did for a living, “I don’t do anything. I’m going to be a university professor instructing others in the wisdom of scepticism. That’s the wisdom of not doing anything.”

  Stuffing the bills into his wallet and dumping the coins into his pocket, Bayle nods again, his head like an anvil teetering on a neck made out of rubber. He motions Knott his way with a slow-moving index finger. Knott moves closer but Bayle keeps curling his drooping finger so he’ll come even nearer. As far as his enormous stomach allows him to Knott leans across the bar, Bayle whispering what to him is a whisper but, to Knott, who never takes his first drink before six p.m., is the tell-tale sign of the drunk who is approaching that crested point of intoxication where a whisper to the soused is a scream to everyone else. “Please don’t call me that anymore, Stan,” Bayle says. “Professor, I mean. Please don’t call me that.”

  Still leaning, Knott nods understandingly, the first rule of running a successful tavern being that the drunken customer is always right. He eases himself back upright into his customary standing position behind the bar and looks up at the muted “Price is Right” people continuing to hop up and down. The Queen streetcar rumbles to a stop outside the window and Knott lights up another cigarette. Bayle carries his pitcher of beer and shot glass of whiskey back to his table by the jukebox.

  A quarter slid down the juke box slot rolls deep into the wired guts of the machine, any combination of a single letter followed by two numbers getting you a song. A randomly selected letter followed by two just as arbitrarily chosen numbers and, suddenly, pounding out of the juke box speakers, music. E-34 buys you something from The Best of BTO, apparently, “Takin’ Care of Business,” specifically. And at this, his entirely uncalculated song selection, Bayle grins bona fide for the first time all day. Taking care of business, oh, yeah. And working overtime, you bet.

  Fat biographical tomes like to tell how personage X performed life-altering act Y because of well-deliberated decision Z, from thought to action with all the perfect logic of a full bladder of beer meaning a quick trip to the bathroom. But Bayle the night before had simply been cold and hungry and had nowhere else to go so he’d followed Smith home, going along with the charade of preparing for his thesis defence the next day because it just seemed ea
sier that way. And when suit-and-tied and cologne-smelling Smith rapped on the door of the study at eight the next morning, saying, “Let’s go, Bayle, pancakes and coffee in twenty minutes sharp, I want to be out of here by nine,” Bayle was awake to the world again and right back where he’d started.

  He showered and shaved and was saying he didn’t mind if he did to seconds of Smith’s blueberry pancakes and another cup of coffee by 8:40. Smith’s wife had been at her architectural firm since seven and Brad was at hockey practice, Zelda volunteering some of her before-school time at a downtown soup kitchen as part of her social studies class. By the time he was soaking up the last of the syrup on his plate, vague thoughts of escape began to float to mind. But soon he was wearing one of Smith’s tweed suit jackets with a plain brown tie to match and sitting in the passenger seat of his BMW as they backed out of the long driveway and motored toward the university a few miles under the speed limit in deference to a steady, grey morning rain.

  And then they were there.

  The door to their assigned room on the third floor of the School of Graduate Studies was unlocked and Smith sat Bayle down at the heavy oak table and slapped a freshly bound copy of Bayle’s dissertation on the table in front of him.

  Bayle tentatively flipped through the pages of his manuscript while Smith busied himself with his own notes. If Bayle wasn’t impressed by the words within — he wasn’t; the long-ago-completed manuscript holding about as much interest as last Tuesday’s weather forecast — he was a little touched, at least, by the professional care Smith had put into having the correct departmental forms signed and inserted in all the right places and making sure the page numbers were the correct amount of space from the top of each page.

  Smith’s pride at never having “lost” a Ph.D candidate in twenty-one years as a thesis supervisor was common knowledge around the department, no one whose dissertation he oversaw ever failing to graduate, find a teaching post, and eventually make a contribution in his or her field. So Bayle knew it was as much for Smith himself as it was for him that the older man remained so determined to see Bayle through to his academic end. But Bayle turned each crisp, graduate-school-approved page with something not unlike gratitude anyway. Concern, after all, was concern. And to a starving man a waxen banana in a bowl full of plastic fruit can look a lot like breakfast.

  “I’m going to get everybody coffee,” Smith said. “And donuts, if I can find any. If Allen shows up before I get back, just smile and nod to whatever he says. He’s practically deaf and never wears his hearing aid or his dentures, so don’t worry if you don’t understand a word he says or don’t answer back if you can’t make out what he’s saying. He’s used to it. Just remember: smile and nod.”

  Bayle smiled and nodded. With cupped hands, loudly: “Whatever you say!” he said.

  “Look over your manuscript again, wise guy,” Smith said. “The Inquisition will be here soon.”

  But Bayle couldn’t possibly go over his manuscript again because he’d never looked it over a first time the night before, neither that nor the Aquinas. He’d turned out the lights almost as soon as Smith had finished with the story of his lost teenage faith, leaving them on only long enough to take a leak in the little washroom connected to the study Smith had had constructed for privacy-while-working sake.

  Standing over the toilet bowl and doing his thing, Bayle had looked up to see a silver cross hanging by itself on the wall over the toilet. He finished, shook, and put his dick back in his underwear without once taking his eyes off the crucifix. It couldn’t belong to Myra, Smith’s wife, because, Bayle knew, she was Jewish. And besides, it was Smith’s own personal washroom. Bayle fell asleep wondering why an avowed atheist would keep a cross up on his wall.

  “Congratulations, Dr. Bayle.”

  And then it was all over.

  Because if you pull a hockey puck out of your coat pocket and suddenly fling it in the direction of a retired, out-of-uniform, out-of-shape goalie, chances are he’ll catch it. Or at least block it with his body. Or at least go down trying.

  So: congratulatory handshakes, back-slapping, and the oddest sensation of being sentenced to life membership in an exclusive club Bayle had a difficult time ever imagining wanting to belong to. Essentially, buffaloed into joining the sacred brotherhood, a gun to the head and the trigger gets pulled unless the funny tasselled hat gets put on with pride and the secret handshake is performed with real gusto.

  Back in the BMW Smith wanted to go somewhere for a drink and to grab a late lunch to celebrate. As proudly pleased about how things had gone as Bayle had turned quiet, every one of Smith’s spirited suggestions that they do something to commemorate the occasion elicited from Bayle only a tide of mumbling about how he was completely exhausted from the four-hour defence, how he should get the confiscated things from his apartment back from out of hock as soon as possible, and how he would appreciate it if Smith could just drop him off anywhere near Queen and Bathurst, where his impounded stuff was being stored. Eventually, Smith reluctantly gave in and pulled the car over in front of a boarded-up building near the intersection where Bayle wanted to be.

  “Right here’s great,” Bayle said, pulling up on the door handle before the car even stopped moving.

  Smith put the car in park. He turned in his seat, seatbelt still on. “Where are you going to put all your things when you get them back?” he said.

  “A friend said he’d hold on to them for me until I get settled.” Lie.

  “I imagine there’s a lot of stuff,” Smith said. “How are you going to get all of it to this friend of your’s house?”

  “Another friend has got a truck.” Lie. “He lives near here and I’ve just got to give him a ring and he’ll help me bring it right over. To my other friend’s house.” Lie.

  “You’re fortunate to have such good friends,” Smith said.

  “You know what they say about friends.”

  Smith waited.

  “Well, what do they say about friends?” Smith said.

  “I haven’t got a clue,” Bayle answered. “I thought you might know.”

  Bayle opened the car door and watched the dirty rainwater gushing away down the gutter, a stream of his own thank-you’s and I’ll-call-you-soon’s greasing his getaway. But before he could disappear into the afternoon Queen Street throng, Smith put his hand on Bayle’s shoulder, freezing him in his seat.

  “You did well, Peter,” Smith said. “I’m proud of you.”

  Bayle nodded a few mute times at Smith’s praise; in spite of the cold rain eagerly unbuckled and shifted his body on the car seat to get his feet on the street. Knott’s Place was only a five-minute walk away. Two minutes, if he ran.

  Smith squeezed his shoulder harder. “It’s going to get easier, Peter. Think about today for instance. You had no choice. You were forced to do your job and you did it admirably. You’ll see. You get older, things become expected of you, things need to get done, and you do them. Things become clearer. You’ll see what I mean. Once you get settled in at St. Jerome’s you’ll know what you’re supposed to do and, knowing you, you’ll do it splendidly. Without ever having to think about it twice.”

  Only the faintest threads of Bayle’s pant fabric remained on the edge of the passenger seat. Feet side by side in the icy, torrenting gutter, Fast approaching thirty, Bayle thought, and still waiting to be dismissed.

  Smith still had his hand on Bayle’s shoulder waiting for a response. Waited, but it didn’t come. He pulled his hand away and Bayle at once got up out of the car.

  Before Bayle had a chance to mutter any more so-long bromides and shut the door, Smith asked, “How much did they say it was going to cost you to get your stuff back?”

  “What stuff?” Bayle said.

  “The stuff from your apartment, Bayle. How much to get it back? I presume that’s how this sort of thing works.”

  “Oh, that stuff. I, uh, I didn’t ask.”

  “You didn’t ask.” Smith shook his head and p
ulled out his wallet, took out two fifty-dollar bills and handed them to Bayle. “This was supposed to be our celebration money, but I guess your beginning to get your affairs in order is probably the prudent thing to do at this time.” Bayle hesitated.

  “Oh, take it, Bayle. You’re going to catch the flu standing there like an idiot in the rain. I know things are tight right now so just take the money. Besides, if you want to, you can always pay me back. Don’t let on that you know when you meet with him next week, but Hunter told me that the St. Jerome’s job pays forty-nine per to start. You shouldn’t have to worry about any boarding house evictions then.”

  Bayle took the bills and stuck them in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said.

  Smith nodded; started up the car engine, flipped on the wipers. Flashing Bayle a smile, “You’re welcome,” he said. “Doctor”

  Bayle rapped twice on the roof of the car and walked away. He watched Smith’s BMW join, then get lost in, a cautious procession of east-bound automobiles all with wipers dutifully working to provide their careful owners an unobstructed view of what was out there in front of them and even what just might be.

  Bayle pulled off Smith’s tie and stuffed it in one of the pockets of the borrowed tweed jacket. Felt the hundred dollars in his pant pocket. Knew where he was going.