Читать книгу The Weight of Stones - C.B. Forrest - Страница 9

Two

On this Tuesday evening, the wind was lifting bits of garbage, the detritus of the city, and whirling it around the visitor’s lot. Early December, the sky dark as coal and glowing at its edges from the burning lights of the city, the air thick with the dampness of coming snow. Upstairs in the meeting room, seated at the corner of a long conference table, Charlie McKelvey was chewing the skin on the side of his thumb. This was a habit his father had also possessed, one of the few things he remembered fondly about the man, an indelible impression. That and tearing his hangnails with his teeth. Caroline was always at him when his own thumbs were cracked and bleeding. Then McKelvey remembered it was something he’d seen Gavin doing on a number of occasions, this automaton’s movement of thumb to mouth, and he wondered then if it was possible for a quirky family trait to be so deeply embedded in the coils of genes and DNA. A sort of torch of the generations. And what other surprises had he passed along in that weathered packet?

The meeting room was always too hot, and this day there was a pong of body odour, a lingering sour ripeness. McKelvey was not paying attention to the words unfolding around him. He was thinking about something his wife had asked him to do, and now he couldn’t quite remember the details. They had shared a rare moment during breakfast that morning, McKelvey guzzling a coffee while standing over the kitchen sink, Caroline up early and eating a bowl of granola at the table. She had raised her head to him, yes. Words spoken. But now he was at a loss.

“Charlie?”

McKelvey startled, and said, “Sorry?”

He lifted his head and smiled benignly at Paul, the group moderator. McKelvey had been doing this since he was a child, the same quick little boy’s smile that carried him through school when his grades weren’t good enough. It was simply a part of his physical character now, like chewing the skin of his thumbs.

“I said, ‘Did you want to say anything to Tim?’ From your experience?”

McKelvey blinked at Paul, then looked over at Tim. Tim was a young man, much younger than McKelvey. A widower at thirty, a crime by any stretch of the imagination. The details were unclear to McKelvey. He believed there had been an accident.

McKelvey shrugged and said, “Maybe next week I’ll think of something.”

The moderator regarded him for a long moment, then he said, “That’s what you said last week. And perhaps even the week before.”

McKelvey smiled and let the little poke roll off him. Then he shrugged and looked over at the young widower. He was a handsome kid, handsome in the fashion of a high school teacher, which is what he was. Sandy hair was swept back over a high forehead, and his clear eyes were framed by modern eyeglasses, small rectangles. McKelvey saw himself at thirty, intense blue eyes burning beneath a lid of thick black curls cropped short, already a married working stiff weighed down with the long shifts and routines of a life. Even back then he and Caroline had owned the choreography of roommates, roommates who happened to be intimate on a regular schedule. Even then it was only to answer a physical need, and it was in reality something they felt they could do for the other without losing ground one way or the other. He couldn’t imagine the house without her.

McKelvey lowered his head and said, “I wish there was something I could say, you know. It’s just that...I mean, with my job and everything, I see what happens to people every day. It happened to me. It happened to us. I can’t change anything. And I don’t know how I’m going to live to be eighty if every day is like this.”

Paul nodded and smiled. He said, “That was something, Charlie. See, you did have something to say.” Then he moved on to the man on McKelvey’s right.

The men’s voices melted to a murmur then, the vague sound of a TV bleeding through the wall of a cheap motel room, and McKelvey got lost in himself. He drifted out and beyond the confines of his physical body, eyes closed, blood hammering in his ears, until finally it was the only sound he could detect, soothing as the methodical whoosh of wipers sliding across a windshield. Shook shook, shook shook. There was nothing for a long time, and it was good, just the blackness of the back of his skull, of the deepest part of himself, and when he squeezed his eyes there was a burst of fireworks, coloured pins, geometrical designs. Then he was pulled to a specific place and time, an earmarked memory. As easy as closing your eyes and moving through time.

He is a boy standing in the sunshine on the sidewalk, squinting as he strains to look all the way up at his father, Grey McKelvey. There is another man standing on the sidewalk, someone who knows McKelvey’s father, another miner, and while this man’s features and voice are blurred, McKelvey understands there is a level of admiration here for his father.

“Al Brooks at the Legion was sayin’ you might run for the union,” the man says.

Grey McKelvey laughs with just the right amount of humility. Flashes his smile and dips his head, the modest and practiced gesture of a man well used to an easy sell.

“Oh no,” Grey chuckles, “I don’t think I’m cut out for that racket. No sir, not me.”

“Well, anyway, Grey, where are you two boys headed?”

McKelvey’s face is warm in the sunshine, his eyes blinded by the soaring yellow light, the sky above them as liquid blue as the combat knife his father keeps in his top dresser drawer, nestled in with his wool socks and strange square packages with rigid rings at the centre. He feels his father’s big hand squeeze his own small hand. He feels his father take a step closer to him, a wall of human security, sixteen feet high, eight feet thick.

“Taking Charlie here to get his hair cut over at Bud’s...”

Then they are transported, and McKelvey sees and smells the inside of the old barbershop on the main street, the multi-coloured bottles of after-shave and hair tonic, the neon blue disinfectant for the black combs, the lather creams, the strong manly scent of sandalwood and alcohol, tobacco smoke and sweat.

Old Bud sets a board across the chair, hefts him up, ties a red apron around his neck, pushes his head forward and begins to work with the scissors. The sound of stainless steel parts working in concert. All the while McKelvey keeps his eyes closed, pretending not to follow the conversation between his father and Bud and the other men assembled in the barber shop, this sanctuary of all things male. They speak in loose code about local women, about their physical attributes, then on to hunting, drinking, eventually coming back around to a war story, for they all, with the exception of Bud, due to his age, had fought in the war in one way or another. Whether soldier, sailor or airman, the war is their generational bond.

Then the haircut is done, and he opens his eyes to the world once again. Bud takes a hard-bristled brush and whisks away the hair trimmings from the back of his neck, and the brush hurts, but he doesn’t say anything, not ever. Bud with his big boxer’s face that reminds McKelvey of an old bulldog with sad bloodshot eyes. Then Bud gives him a lollipop from an old coffee tin he keeps under the cash...and he can right now taste the sugary orange...

McKelvey opened his eyes. Like waking up. The meeting was closing in its traditional fashion, some of the men hugging, others patting one another on the back, congratulating each other for progress made in this battle against grief—or perhaps simply for making it through one more Tuesday night. McKelvey was one of them, and yet he was apart. He found it impossible to imagine himself slumped forward in his chair, head in hands, crying in front of strangers. He couldn’t do it; it wasn’t in him. He slipped out the door and was down the hall before the moderator finally caught up to him.

“Charlie,” he called, “Charlie, wait up. I’m glad I caught you,” Paul said, pausing for a breath. He smiled. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Listen, about tonight—”

“No, no. I wanted to ask a favour. It’s Tim, he’s...”

McKelvey glanced at his watch, but not really. He said, “It’s just I’m running late and...”

Paul moved a hand to McKelvey’s shoulder and looked into his eyes, unblinking.

“My daughter was hit by a car on her way to school six years ago, Charlie.”

“I know, Paul,” McKelvey said, “I know, I know.”

“We’re in the same club, you and me. All the guys in that room. We’re all on the same side of the street watching everybody else go on about their lives over on the other side.” Paul was a tall, slender, soft-spoken man. His eyes were hazel, moist. His eyelids fluttered when he spoke. He struck McKelvey as the sort of rare man who manoeuvred easily and completely without shame in the realms of emotion, sensitivity. It was for this reason a certain type of man—a man like McKelvey, say— often assumed at first glance that a man like Paul must be weak.

“Nobody else knows what it’s like. How can they?” Paul said.

McKelvey said, “I know...”

“I need you to help Tim. He’s not doing so well. Will you have a coffee with him, maybe go for a beer? I think you could help him. Maybe help yourself while you’re at it,” Paul said.

“I guess,” McKelvey said. “It’s busy right now at work, but maybe in a week or so.”

Paul reached into his pocket and handed McKelvey a folded square of paper.

“Give him a call, Charlie.”

McKelvey held the note between his thumb and forefinger, as though he had been handed a summons to appear. So the whole thing was pre-meditated, planned before the meeting had even begun. Paul was no fool, McKelvey knew. He knew the man had a way of getting more out of the group members than they set out to divulge, putting on this act of the eye-fluttering half-wit. The man possessed the sort of quiet intelligence that could not be underestimated by a police detective. McKelvey was always on guard in the presence of psychologists and social workers and group therapy moderators. Their craft was emotional sorcery.

“All right,” McKelvey said, shoving the paper in his pocket, “if it’ll get you off my back.”

He turned and walked away, wishing he’d rounded that last corner about thirty seconds sooner. That was the truth of it, and he felt a pang of guilt for even considering the request a burden. It was a privilege to be asked. You’re such an asshole, Charlie.