Grady works whenever he can, picking up a few months at the canning factory, a few months with the town. And he makes himself generally available for odd jobs; people stop him on the street and ask if he’s got some time, if he could do a job, and he always says, Just name it. He knows damn near every shingle in the town like the back of his hand and he’s poured more than his share of cement. He gets a bit of a pension cheque from the war. He was old to go but he went anyway. He figured he wasn’t exactly vital to the home front and he was fit. He didn’t like to see the young guys taking it all on. When it was over, they put him in the vets hospital and opened his hip to go after the shrapnel he’d brought home with him from France but there’s some there still, he can feel it from the inside if he moves the wrong way.
He goes to the dances to watch and to lean against the wall and talk, find out what’s going on. He likes to talk to the cops. He’s not at all troubled by a uniform. Sometimes he’ll watch and quietly point out a stumble or a stagger, he knows without even thinking which of the pups is the most likely to overdo it. He collects most of his cigarettes leaning against the wall at the Casino. When there’s a lull in the conversation someone usually offers a pack of smokes around and he always takes one, to be polite, and tucks it behind his ear, where it stays until it falls out later, broken, on his pillow.
He’d never bother the young girls with his attentions, although he does love to watch them move, he does love the summer colours of their sundresses and their brown arms and their white sandals. Whenever Grady catches himself starting to think about sex, he pulls up short. Only if there’s a polka or a square dance and he can see that he’s needed will he let someone drag him onto the floor. He pays the price for days after, the price being short hard pains like shards of glass drifting around loose in his blood, but what the hell, he figures, life’s for fun, ain’t it?
He thinks the American kids are a huge pain in the ass. He hates to see the girls from town batting their eyelashes at the suntanned boys from the U.S. of A. And he could throttle the pups who prance around trying to catch the attention of the half-dressed girls from over the border when there are so many of their own to choose from. Grady has always thought the Americans were a little late to the war.
He was the one who told Jack the joke in the first place, the one Jack told to Donna, who told it to Duncan, who was disgusted. If Grady knew that Duncan was disgusted by something as ordinary as a little off-colour joke, he’d call him a candy ass. He’d take him out for a walk around the balcony and tell him a couple of stories from France that would straighten his curlies. Disgusted? What a goddamned pup.
GRADY will outlive his good wife by quite a few years. He will help her when she is dying, bringing tea and arrowroot biscuits to the bed on a tray. He’ll have her prescriptions filled and wash the sheets and the quilts and stand on the back porch to pin them to the line. He’ll keep the Ford gassed up in case she has a bad spell in the middle of the night and he has to get her into the city fast.
Soon after she dies he will search around through her things for the list of his sins, but he won’t ever find it. He’ll give her Bible and her other books back to the church she got them from. In a couple of years, he’ll move in with a woman of limited means who was left alone about the same time he was. Her grown children will try hard to get used to him. Surprisingly, a few of the town people will bring modest wedding gifts to the door, a hand mixer, a cut-glass vase, a small framed Blue Boy done in petit point. Grady and the widow will pool their resources and live for a long time, quite happily and privately, in sin. Once or twice before he’s too old to move Grady will pull her from her brocade chair and waltz her round the room, humming a sad old love tune he remembers from the lake to lend some rhythm to their steps.
NORM is married and his wife loves to dance. They’ve only missed one Casino dance in six years, and that was because of a wedding in Windsor they had to go to. He’s heavyset and dark, he always looks like he could use a shave, although he shaves all the time. He wears whatever his wife puts out for him to wear; he figures she’s the one who has to keep everything clean and ironed, she might as well tell him what to wear. He works for a small trucking company, he was never any scholar, and he makes big bucks; he likes to drive and he likes to drive long and hard. They already have a house half paid for, it’s in her name in case anything should happen to him, and that’s more than most guys his age have got. When he’s gone on a three or four day haul, his wife sews things, curtains and clothes for the kids. Sometimes she sews for other people, she’s that good, and she takes the money and banks it in her own account. He figures that’s fair enough. Sometimes she uses some of her money to buy him expensive things he’d never ask for, a wool sweater, a soft leather wallet, an oak liquor cabinet for the living room. She likes quality.
Usually they go to the dances with another couple, people their age, people like them. They start out at home with maybe a barbecue supper and a few rye and Cokes and then, about nine o’clock, he picks up the sitter and they head out to the lake. There’s some flirting around sometimes, high school stuff, but he doesn’t get any ideas about any other women and nobody gets any ideas about his. That stuff’s bullshit. Jaws get broken over that kind of stuff. What he’s seen of it makes him sick. He likes his wife and he likes his kids and he likes his job. He figures that’s more than enough.
At the Casino, he dances the first few with his wife and then he lets her go. Give her a summer night at the lake and she’s sixteen all over again. She’s happy, and later, she’s still happy, laughing and brave on top of him in bed. He just hopes she can always dance. She often starts out with Jack, the skinny McLean kid, and Norm likes to watch him swing her around the floor, he likes to watch her make the kid feel good. When they’re finished, Jack delivers her right back to Norm’s side, although Norm always asks, Why bring her back, she won’t stay. She carries on, dances with most of the other men from town. They consider her part of their evening, and when she takes them back to their wives she usually stays to talk for a bit. She remembers things. She can name everybody’s kids, right down to the babies.
Norm tries to make a point of dancing with Donna and her friends. They used to do the babysitting and he knows most of their parents, one way or another. He always asks them, How’s your lovelife, and often they try to confide in him, hinting at broken hearts and bullheaded boyfriends and dreams too complicated to come true. He tells them all, even the ones who aren’t so pretty, that they’re young and beautiful and that they shouldn’t take any crap. He tells them if he were still a young stud on the prowl, he wouldn’t have to look far. They laugh at the thought of him being a young stud and tell him he’s just saying that and he says, No I’m not. Sometimes when he’s holding one of the plainer girls, he can see a pretty rough time ahead for her and a low-grade sadness settles into his shoulders. When that happens, he’ll hold on to her a little tighter than necessary, finger her back without letting on, pat her bum when the dance is finished and she’s leaving him.
Once, when he was busy talking, one of the young Americans, a cocky type with a deep tan from waterskiing all the damn day long, asked his wife to dance. It was a slow dance and she kept backing away from him and looking at his face, talking to him. Then he said something she didn’t like and she walked out of his arms and left him standing dumb in the middle of the floor. When Norm asked did she want to tell him exactly what had been said to her, she said not really. There was a brief grouping of men around Norm, which the kid picked right up on. He left with a couple of his buddies and didn’t show his face again until the end of the summer.
NORM will grow older watching his wife dance and enjoying the benefits of her happiness a little later. Both of his kids will stay around home. They’ll marry and bring their own kids over often, which will please Norm more than he can say, although he’ll wish there was a little more discipline used. He’ll tell his wife as long as he lives he’ll never get used to backtalk from a kid. He�
�ll have enough money to help set the grandkids up and he’ll do it, although they won’t show any recognizable signs of gratitude. I can wait, he’ll say.
When he is fifty-eight, his wife will make a quick trip into the city for dress material one rainy summer afternoon and on the way home she’ll be run off the road by a camper trying to pass a semi on a slippery curve.
Norm will bluff through another nineteen years, grieving every minute of every day of every year, pretending to be okay, putting people off. The most he’ll say is, You have to keep going, don’t you? At his granddaughter’s wedding dance, the grateful bride will come to him after she’s danced with her new husband and her father and coax him onto the floor, pulling on his arm, wrapping it around her waist. He’ll tell her that she is young and beautiful and that she shouldn’t take any crap.
THE CASINO will burn one Saturday night, right to the ground. The fire will start downstairs in some old, nearly bare wires and will be helped along by a nice breeze off the lake. A cottager will go to the mini-golf to call in the fire. No one will die, although the whole thing will go up like a cardboard box. None of the cops will be around when it starts, although one of them will be cruising the beach in his car and he’ll get there soon, lights flashing, siren blaring.
Duncan, Jack, Grady and Norm will come together in a group at the top of the oak staircase and stand there herding people, holding back each wave of dancers until they think the stairs can take them. Everyone will go along with this. The fire won’t be right under the stairs, but close enough. Grady will belt a couple of jerks who are horsing around, who think this is exciting. They’ll sober right up. Norm’s wife will want to stay with him, but he’ll get her started on the stairs and she’ll move down and out with the others. Duncan and Jack will help the band carry their instruments over to the top of the stairs and then Norm will lose it. Jesus, he’ll yell, I think those can stay behind.
When everyone but the four of them and the band is down the stairs, Norm will feel the floor with his hands and shout to the others that he’s taking one quick run around the balcony. They all know that a kid who’s had too much will sometimes go out there to sleep it off for a while. Duncan and Jack will point to the balcony on the lakeside and tell him they’ll check there. Grady will wait on the top step. They’ll all come back coughing pretty bad, shaking their heads. Nobody, they’ll say. Smoke will rise in soft thin streams through the dance floor and it will be hot, even through their shoes they’ll feel it. Norm will say, All right, one at a time on these stairs, and they’ll start down. Duncan will grab the fiddle, Jack will take the two guitars, and the men from the band will pick up the drums. You’re last then, Norm will say. You’re bringing those drums, you’re behind me.
They’ll make it, all of them, although when they get halfway down the stairs there will be nothing to see but black smoke and no way to hear anything but the fire. They’ll turn in the direction they’ve turned a hundred times before and they’ll find the open doors. They’ll run through the parking lot and down the dune toward the crowd which has gathered on the beach: dancers and cottagers, children in their pyjamas, older people who were asleep. Lights will be on in all the cottages. Duncan will give the fiddle back to the fiddler. Jack will drop both guitars in the sand and sit down beside the drums. They’ll all cough hard and hawk to clear their lungs.
The parking lot will be empty of all cars but Norm’s Pontiac and Duncan’s Dad’s Buick. Five guys will get the Pontiac in neutral and push it back as far as they can, trying to stay off the road because they can hear the fire truck coming, maybe a mile away, but coming. A few others will run over to the Buick, but it’s been sitting pretty close to the heat and the paint is already starting to shine funny, starting to darken and blister.
Just before the fire truck pulls up, the piano will go through, hitting the cement floor like nothing else could. Down near the water, the piano player will quietly say, That was an F chord if I’m not mistaken, and there will be small chuckles all around him, although he won’t laugh.
When the firemen jump down from the truck, Norm and Grady will be there to tell them that there’s nobody inside, everybody’s out. Several of the firemen will haul a thick hose down to the lake and set up a portable pump. When they get the water coming they’ll quickly put the hose to the Buick and then turn their attention to the Casino. They’ll lay on lots of water and nobody will know why.
The Casino owners will arrive, two guys from the city who stay with their families in rented cottages all summer, and they’ll be happy as hell to hear that no one was hurt in any way. Grady will ask them if she was insured, and one of them will say yeah. When Grady asks how much, they’ll just ignore him, but he knows he’ll find out eventually. People tend to tell him things.
Parents will start to arrive, the word having got to town. They’ll park way back on the Casino road, and it will take them a while to make their way through the firemen and down to the beach to find whoever belongs to them. Two carloads will arrive from the reserve which borders the cottages a couple of miles down the lake to the south, and a few army people will come from the camp on the north end, but there won’t be anything for them to do.
Some people will leave, the very young, the very old, but most will stay. Although the air direcdy above the Casino will hold the yellow-red glow of the fire, the moon and the stars and the silvery sheen on the surface of the water will be eclipsed by smoke. Men will get flashlights from their glove boxes. They’ll aim them like searchlights up to the fire and over the surrounding dunes, out across the dark water, down to their feet if they’re walking from one cluster of people to another, the light cutting a safe path through the darkness, through the unexpected driftwood. Lake Huron will move generously through the thick fire hose all night long. The wind will change, pushing the heat down to the beach. Large cinders will drift through the air, coming to rest on the sand and on the water, on heads and shoulders and arms and on the cars which were moved from the lot and parked haphazardly on the shore. The roof will fall in around two-thirty and the last wall will go just as the sun’s coming up.
Jack and Duncan will send their parents, who have driven out to find them, home. They will wander around the dark beach all night, talking to their friends and to older people they’ve never talked to before, easing themselves into the circle of girls who have built a small fire on the beach with the driest of the driftwood and kindling borrowed from a nearby cottage.
In the morning they’ll catch a ride back to town with Grady in his truck. The Buick will have to be towed in. While he’s got them, Grady will decide to tell them a few war stories; this isn’t the first fire he’s seen and not the biggest, not by a country mile. They’ll sit quiet. They won’t hear half of what he’s saying to them.
Norm will stand down on the beach with his wife most of the night, watching. He’ll wander off occasionally to talk to someone and then he’ll come back and stand behind her, wrap his arms around her, hold as much of her as he can to try to stop the shivering. Eventually, she’ll remember home. She’ll tell Norm the sitter’s probably good and scared, likely wondering what happened to them. Then she’ll tell herself that the kid is more than smart enough to have called her mother, she’ll know by now. Norm will smooth her hair with his hand and tell her that they’ll find some place else to dance.
At dawn, they’ll drive home tired. In the car, she will tell him that she saw a few fair-sized rats in the dunes when she was running down to the beach, and Norm will say that makes sense if you think about it. When they’re almost home he’ll tell her he’s pretty sure it was the balcony that made it go up so fast, all that air getting sucked in, feeding the fire. He won’t tell her that his feet are burning, that they still feel hot inside his shoes. He won’t even know if it’s heat he feels or just the memory of heat.
FIGURINES
The figurines, a prepubescent boy and girl, are a foot high and hollow. The boy wears a creamy white sailor top, blue britches and a dusty
, wide-brimmed country hat. His strawberry blond hair is very long and thick. He stands holding an upright oar, hugging it close to his body, his eyes fixed on some puzzling middle distance. The girl, plump by today’s standards and fairly self-assured by the set of her jaw, is dressed in a summer frock with a dropped waist. A voluptuous satin sash encircles her hips. In the crook of her elbow she holds, too tightly, a half-crushed nosegay. Her hair, the colour of pale beach sand, is longer still and thicker, falling heavily on her shoulders.
Joan imagines these children to be cousins, on an outing near a sun-dappled lake.
The clay, painted by a steady hand in summer white and soft pastels, blue and pink and apple green, and a fleshy peach, could be from anywhere. The figurines are not attributable to anyone or to any time. There are no markings on the bases and this disappoints Joan, more than seems reasonable.
She’s stood the cousins on a high glass shelf in her curio, just under the lights. There is a good chance her dinner guests see them as coy artifacts from some impossible past and, of course, they are.
The figurines had been a gift to Joan’s great-aunt Lottie when she was a young, unmarried nurse. This would have been in the early twenties, the reputedly Roaring Twenties when there were women in the world who eagerly grabbed the opportunity after a God-awful war to be frivolous, who drank bathtub gin and danced unrestrained in dresses layered with fringes that snapped out from their bodies in waves. The aunt lived in with a family while the aged father died, tending to him. She told Joan this. He must have needed what only a nurse could administer to ease him through it, something from a pharmacist, something potent but dangerous in the wrong hands. Whatever his need, Joan imagines her aunt fulfilling it with the same detached care she displayed in very late middle age, when she knew her. When the work was completed, the figurines were given to her, either in payment or above payment, in gratitude.
Casino and Other Stories Page 4
