Smoke River

by Krista Foss

  When a boy realizes he is stronger than his father, a delicate negotiation defines their adult relationship. Mitch grew more fearful of his son as he morphed from a rambunctious kid who adored his dad to an athlete whose physical prowess was encouraged by his mother. At age thirteen, Las could have handily pinned Mitch to the floor. He knew it; so did Mitch. Better men would have weathered the moment with an internal grace, a trump of wisdom. But Mitch’s imagination produced only one response. With every new shoe size, every bicep inch that Las grew into, Mitch treated the boy as if he were less intelligent, less responsible, less competent. Ella protected her son from anything outright hurtful, so Mitch took to diminishing Las in ways his wife couldn’t intercept.

  “I’m not going to ask Gord outright,” says Peg. “It’s one thing to have my own suspicions, but if he confesses directly to me, I have a legal duty. What you do about Las is your own business.”

  Mitch drains his third Scotch. It is hard to keep his thoughts hinged. As he lifts his glass, he feels a tickle in his throat, a small spear of pain. It makes him cough loudly. He puts his hand to his neck and massages under his jaw as he swallows. There’s a hard lump under his left ear that’s sore to touch. Now that he thinks of it, his throat has felt raw all week. It could be red and aggravated by infection, or worse. He imagines barnacle-like growths occluding the passage of saliva, food, Scotch. He has an urge to interrupt Peg and ask her to look into his mouth. Would she see swelling or angry redness? Should he drive to the urgent-care centre in Pemcoe?

  “How do you know Las was even there?” he asks after another wet cough. His tonsils throb. He wishes he’d had Ella come along; she carries oil of oregano in her purse. He notices Peg pull a piece of paper out of her hip pocket and glance at it.

  “Those boys are always together. Can you account for your kid’s whereabouts lately? Ask your daughter about the scratch on Las’s neck, the things she found under his bed. What she knows.”

  “Stephanie talked to you about this?”

  Peg waves away his concern. “Doesn’t matter. If rumours break that they are being investigated for the assault of a native girl, that alone will be the ruin of you and me. Even if they are innocent, it will take a long time to establish that. In the meantime, who knows what will end up in the paper, the town tittle-tattle.”

  The bar bobs like a blurry carousel, up and down. Mitch stumbles from the booth. He ploughs through the bathroom door mid-retch. His vomit sprays the urinal with a rough pointillism of orange and pink. He rinses his face, his mouth, and gargles tap water. His shoes are flecked with vomit but he doesn’t care. Back at the booth, he orders another Scotch.

  Peg has a plan. Its logic cuts through his inebriation and the throbbing.

  “We’re going to get out in front of this, Mitch. Solve the blockade and our own little troubles with one big offensive.”

  “I’m not clear what you’re saying.”

  “Well,” says Peg, “it’s pretty simple. We offer the girl and her family a chunk of change to not talk, even to go away. At the same time we convince the government that now’s the time to step in, buy the land from you, shut down the whole carnival. Let them deal with the natives in civil court.”

  “The development’s dead, then? Just like that?”

  Peg doesn’t answer. Mitch drops his head into his hands. The exhaustion he has been fighting for weeks presses him into the table. He wiggles his Scotch-soaked tongue in his mouth, imagines the alcohol’s antiseptic staunching the contagion in his throat.

  “Where’s the money for the girl coming from?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got someone who is willing to help us out. Let’s just say he has an interest in the outcome.”

  She is in control, and Mitch wants to be in control. He loathes Peg now, more than his wife does. He avoids her eyes.

  Peg gets up to leave and Mitch doesn’t stand. “My ride’s out back. I’ll be in touch. Just do what I say, okay?”

  He nods his head.

  “And Mitch, your cough – get that checked out.” She slips out the rear exit like some sort of B-movie operative.

  Mitch looks around. There has been no one to witness this sorry moment in his life, not even Will Jacobs, whose business has so declined because of the blockade that he’s taken to drinking in the afternoons and napping in a booth. Mitch takes out his cellphone and calls his wife.

  “You home?” he asks when Ella answers sharply. “I have news. Wait for me in my office. Lots to discuss.”

  Mitch lets his head slide right onto the table’s surface, his eyes slick with tears. Peg noticed he’s unwell – that’s something. He feels grateful for it.

  The first time Mitch saw Ella Nagy, he was sixteen, the tobacco harvest had just begun, and Doreville’s downtown was electrified by the dark-skinned novelty of seasonal workers.

  After a day in the fields, the primers would lean smoking against the walls of the Legion or sip sodas outside his father’s grocery store, eyes bleary, heads bowed with fatigue, skin glistening under white singlets. Ella would walk past them, her cotton sundress sliding deliciously along her legs, a small kick of wind reaching up to her thighs. Mitch could tell she wanted men, and especially these strangers, to stare. There was some sport in it for her. It may never have occurred to her that the very things that secured her vanity – shiny whorls of red-blonde hair, buttery skin, dainty chest, small buttocks – might be repulsive or simply curious to them. Instead she breezed by these hot, tired men staring forward, her chin held a little too high, as if to say, You can’t have me.

  She gave the same look to the tobacco growers’ sons who scarred the summer asphalt with their muscle-car tires, screeching to a halt at the traffic lights or in the Legion parking lot just in time to see Ella pass, spot the flame in her cheeks, watch the hired men swallow her up with their stares, the incomprehensible words they snickered to each other under their breath. And those quick-to-anger progeny of hard-working immigrants, who took their daddies’ money to fuel their dreams of not being farmers, felt heat against their temples and in their bellies. The brown strangers assured their father’s livelihoods and their own privileges, but did that give them a right to desire their women?

  Every evening Mitch cocked his ear to hear his father mutter about which farmer’s boy had drained one beer too many at the Legion, made a remark, thrown a punch, or brandished a broken bottle, only to find himself tumbling out into the street under the weight of a man who was a parent, who didn’t have health insurance or an education, and thus had much more to lose than a tooth or a patch of blood vessels if he couldn’t go to work in the morning. Mitch gave Ella credit for every fight that came after one of her strolls through town.

  Watching unseen from his father’s store, he studied her beauty so he could see past it, to the uneasy mixture of egotism and insecurity underneath the good skin, behind the big eyes. It was Mitch who divined she’d likely never summon the nerve to leave Doreville, and so would need to be distracted from regret. Casting off the shame of her poverty-line childhood, resisting the town’s rough agricultural pedigree – that would be enough. Knowing this, he won her. Kept her, too.

  But what had he really wanted? Ella’s admiration, not just her mild gratitude, her civil appreciation of the comforts, the safety and compromises he offered. He wanted to be a rogue wave, the thing that brought her to her knees with desire, if possible. Or, failing that, respect.

  “We have something to discuss,” Shayna says on the phone. “Can we meet?”

  Coulson assumes it’s about the girl; they haven’t had any contact since he found her. Even then it was perfunctory. Shayna left a message to say thanks. He wanted to hear more – how she missed him, for instance – even if the context was wrong. He’s called her back several times since, hoping to hear her voice if only for a minute. Her line is always busy. Once it rang three times and then went dead. Her voicemail is full.

  “Where?” he asks. Already anticipations tickles the back of hi
s neck, his gut.

  “That pub,” says Shayna. “The squeaky thingamajig. Wouldn’t mind seeing the inside of it this time.”

  Coulson chuckles. It’s a test – or a friendly fuck you. He’ll find out which soon enough. “Sure. I could use a drink.”

  He walks through the Squeaky Vicar’s doors twenty minutes later, wearing his new shirt for the second time. He wonders if she’ll notice, understand that it’s for her. Inside there’s a fug of frying oil, spilled beer, and ineffectual air conditioning. So many places of beauty and breezes where they can talk and hold hands freely, but she chooses here. The pub is deserted, other than Will Jacobs snoring wetly on a bar stool. Coulson is relieved at the lack of judgmental eyes but knows his relief is problematic. He’s been waiting for her through the better part of every day, long into the night, for the past two months. He can’t afford to care about what other people think.

  He pops his head through the kitchen’s swinging doors in search of a barmaid. A blousy girl lifts her head from a newspaper spread over the ice machine and grins so that her eyes send high beams of delight in his direction. “Long time, no see.” She winks.

  Coulson hesitates. On some dreary winter night she must have appealed to him. He doesn’t remember. “Could I bother you for a couple of pints?”

  She hustles towards him, and Coulson moves briskly to the edge of the bar. He pays for his beers, grunting responses to her small talk and pretending not to notice her indignant pout when he carries the pints away to the farthest booth. He sits with his back to the barmaid. Why did he so readily agree to meet here? What did it prove?

  Shayna’s small shadow lengthens across the pub’s front window, followed by her form. He watches the wind pull wisps of hair from around her face, revealing her jaw, her lips, her nose. That’s all it takes – he’s split wide open by the sight of her. She enters the bar, plunks down across from him, and shoves a small heaped quart box towards his resting forearm without a word of hello.

  He smiles. “Black raspberries.” He wants to wrap her in his arms, run his lips against her skin.

  She shakes her head. “Wrong season. Blackberries.”

  He looks down and sees his mistake. Each fruit is the size of a thumbprint, their colour as unyielding as her eyes.

  “Try one,” she says. “I found a few canes at the edge of the o’tá:ra. The bulldozers got the rest of the patch. They’re ripe.”

  He pops a berry in his mouth and pushes the untouched pint of beer towards her.

  She waves it away, hangs her head, takes a deep breath, and pops up her chin to look straight at him. “I’m pregnant,” she says.

  Coulson sinks back in his seat. He takes a large gulp of beer, pushes his shoulder into his mouth to wipe it on his new shirt. Suddenly his head fills with an electric din: the hum of the ice machine, the crackle of the bar’s old stereo speakers, the whine of the neon signs, a fan in the kitchen. It builds like tinnitus inside his ears. He fights the urge to leave, to escape her and those two words that tether him wholly and completely to this place, when he’s nurtured a private conceit that he can leave at anytime, do something else, wear an H. Huntsman suit again, take trips to Prague and Buenos Aires, train for a triathlon, or learn to sail. Read all those big fucking books he never got through in university.

  He looks at Shayna and sees that she is speaking. Her eyebrows are raised in a question and her forehead bunches, but through the din he can neither hear nor clearly see her for the vision of Marie rolling over on top of him in bed nearly a decade earlier. She was so pretty after lovemaking when she was without makeup, her face flushed and damp, her hair a wild and full misbehaviour. He was about to start kissing her all over again when she said it: Baby. Let’s have a baby. He took a long breath and widened his eyes at the loud bass of panic working its way from his gut to his throat, filling his ears. After a few seconds Marie leapt from the bed in a storm of tears. His silence, the strange look on his face were the confession he wouldn’t voice: he didn’t want to be tied to her in that way.

  “I don’t think I want it,” Shayna is saying. “Just thought I should tell you.”

  She is speaking more loudly, and it is her loudness that pulls Coulson back into the present. He takes another long swig of his beer and looks around as it slides down his throat. The light is waning and the pub has begun to populate with townies returning home from work. Coulson can hear Will Jacobs, awake now and voluble, behind the bar, offering drinks to every arrival.

  “Sorry?” he says.

  “I don’t want it.” Both her body and voice are rigid.

  A few people meander past their booth towards the back room, strain their necks with expressions both curious and hostile. Coulson wishes he could think strategically. But now he can think only about the long nights he has stayed awake listening, aching for the sound of Shayna’s soft feet landing on the back step, her small hands working open the screen door, rattling the aluminum like bracelet charms.

  “Hold on there,” he says. “I’m just taking this all in.”

  “You’re freaking out. I can see that much.”

  He musters the energy for a fledgling smile and lets out a long sigh. His mother once admitted she never wanted to have kids. Her ambition had been to teach in Africa. He remembers feeling stymied at first, even betrayed by this confession, as if she was suddenly unknown to him. You changed everything, she added, with an uncharacteristic touch to his face. Once you have one, you want more. You miss the small burdens of a baby. The women of her kin felt motherhood in their knees, the small of their backs, she told him. It makes our teeth soft. She squeezed his hand for a long time. Couldn’t have more than one, as it turned out. Some don’t ever get the experience. Can’t tell you how thankful I am. It was the most tender feeling his mother had ever expressed to his face.

  Coulson reaches past the nearly empty pint, the quart of blackberries, and wraps his hands around Shayna’s smaller, lighter ones so his thumbs rest in the delicate clefts of her wrists. They stay like this for a few minutes, each staring off into space, smiling weakly, with a small acreage of their skin fused.

  The barmaid appears suddenly at their booth, a greyish cloth scrunched in her hands. She grabs the unused paper coaster behind Shayna’s elbow and reaches for Coulson’s pint glass. He encircles it with one hand.

  “Whoa, there’s a good half swallow left in that.”

  She pulls back, rests her hands on her hips. “Well, you folks ready to settle up?”

  “I’ll just pay at the bar when I’m through, like always, thanks.” He tries to hide his irritation. The barmaid leans back towards the table, unfolds the cloth on its surface, and pushes its sour smell close to where Coulson’s fingers are again entwined with Shayna’s. Shayna loosens her grip as if to pull her hands away from his, but Coulson hangs on and shakes his head slowly. The barmaid leaves with a scowl.

  “I think we should go,” says Shayna, her glance wheeling around the filling tables.

  “I want you to hold off,” he says. “About the baby. You can’t be far along.”

  “Three months. Four, tops,” she says.

  “Let’s talk some more.”

  Will Jacobs appears at their booth wearing a stained, faded T-shirt stretched like a leotard over his belly. He looks bilious and flushed. His hands move in front of him, play-fighting nervously, and his eyes are trained on where Shayna’s fingers intertwine with Coulson’s. “You’ll have to leave. You’re upsetting my patrons.”

  Coulson laughs heartily. Over Will’s shoulders he can see a half-dozen sets of eyes fixed on their booth. Shayna wiggles her hands free, slides them across the table, and hides them along her thighs.

  “Do you always throw out your quietest customers?” Shayna is already getting up, moving out of the booth.

  “I don’t know what your game is, Stercyx, you being a landowner and all. But I don’t appreciate it. Your point’s made. Now go home.”

  Coulson stands up quickly. He towers over Will.
Shayna puts a light hand on his arm but he resists. He wants to test her, see if her mettle is a match for his. Once a hailstorm laid waste to his entire tobacco crop in twenty minutes and he didn’t turn away, just watched the green plants tremble and rip under a drum corps of ice pellets. Cruelty, even the kind delivered with glee, can be endured. Love is harder to take.

  She nods in the direction of the bar. Among the slump-shouldered regulars there’s a small knot of bald-headed young men he doesn’t recognize, their eyes trained on him like underfed dogs. She instinctively places a hand on her abdomen, and he looks down, sees something there, the subtlest swelling. He grabs her wrist, pulls her close, wraps his other arm around her shoulders, and leads her to the door, sheltered by as much of his body as he can muster.

  As he is about to step out, a beer bottle grazes his calf and shatters on the tile beside his boot. Coulson jumps; a shard flies up and bounces from his knee. He jerks around, and Shayna slides away from him out the door. The pub has gone quiet, become a horseshoe of watchful figures, including the barmaid, with her crossed arms and bitter smile, and others he could greet by first name, many he’s known for years. Reflexively he flips his middle finger to them before stepping outside, calling out for Shayna. He hears jeering laughter, sharp, then muffled as the door closes.

  He stops. Ahead of him in the fading light, Shayna is a small moving shadow pulling him towards a future he’s unsure of. For a moment he feels a terrible thirst and wishes he could turn around, go back into the pub, and order another steadying pint.

  Ella bends at the waist as if she is in pain. Mitch watches her pick at the kitchen floor with the focus of a hungry pigeon. When she straightens, her face is pulled into a point. “So, let me get this straight. You believe Las is guilty based on a scratch that Stephanie saw, a stupid baseball cap, and Gordo’s truck tires? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Mitch shifts nervously. Las lies in his bed only a floor above them. He doesn’t know if Stephanie is home. Ella’s voice is about to crescendo. A quiet down gesture – that one with his hands – will only set her off. She’s the kind of woman a man dare not shush.