Читать книгу The Devil's Dust - C.B. Forrest - Страница 9

The oblong capsules wrap the occupant of Room 27 in a cocoon of gauzy, tongue-thick sleep until just after ten the next morning. Eventually and inevitably, the aches and pains located indecipherably throughout McKelvey’s body begin to stir, shaking off chemical slumber. First the hip, then the knees, the back, the shoulders. The wind chill and the dampness in their air up here give a cruel twist to the first signs of arthritis that sit like rust in the cracks of old broken bones, abused joints. He swings his feet to the floor, teeth already clenched to start the day. Groggy from the pills, head stuffed with cotton, he licks his lips and rubs his puffy eyes with the heels of his palms. Yawns and stretches and looks around the room, wondering yet again what in the hell he thought he was doing by coming back here, what sort of loop he was looking to close. Maybe there was no loop after all. Life, in all of its purported mystery, wasn’t so mysterious after all. Things as they are and always will be.

He moves to the duffle bag that sits on the floor and digs through the jumble of clothes for a clean pair of underwear and socks. His hand finds the cellular phone he so loathes and he sets this on the bed. It is not the implement or even the strange cordless technology he despises — though there must be witchcraft involved in a telephone that has no cord leading anywhere — it is the fact they are making them so small, his thick fingers struggle to enter correct numbers. There is also the matter of how tiny the digital display is, and he has not and will never admit to needing glasses.

He fishes a hand in the bag again and this time pulls out a stack of pamphlets. An array of informational pieces graphically designed in soothing colours, featuring photographs of salt-and-pepper-haired men smiling and playing touch football with ruddy-cheeked, smiling grandchildren, with reassuring titles like Prostate Cancer: A Survivor’s Guide. He tosses them on the bed. His gaze alternates between the pamphlets and the phone. The red light that indicates a missed call flashes on the phone like a poke in the eye. The calls — for he knows they are in the multiple — are from any number of people who have taken umbrage with his sudden pulling of stakes. As though it is somehow shocking that a man who finds himself poked, prodded, goaded, cajoled, and generally fucked with should one day decide he has reached the limit of his tolerance. It happened just like that: one morning he simply woke, threw clothes in the duffle, and walked up to the bus terminal on Bay Street at Dundas. Scanned the list of destinations on the board, paid for the ticket in cash like some deadbeat on the lam, and was off.

Now he steps into the bathroom. He turns on the shower and waits for the initial explosion of rusty water to subside, these barks of brackish brown-red, and then he is in and under the flow, hands to the tile, head bowed. This may be as close as he comes to absolution this day, and he’ll take it.

They are waiting for him down at the front desk as he knew they would be. It is the night manager and two other old-timers. They are all in their late seventies or early eighties, with white hair and yellowed, rheumy eyes. They are drinking coffee from white Styrofoam cups. They stop talking when McKelvey comes down the stairs. There is just no getting around it. This is life in a small town so far removed from the cities that any visitor is considered an aberration until all facts are investigated, sorted, and filed. He could just as well be Tom Selleck in town to film a Sunday night movie.

“Sleep okay there, buddy?” the manager asks, trying to show his friends in some way that he has already formed a relationship with the guest.

“Not bad. You wouldn’t have an extra cup of that coffee.”

“Endless cup,” the manager says, and goes to the pot sitting on a stand by the reception desk. “Comes with the room. Just one of the many perks of the Station.”

The men chuckle and the manager hands McKelvey a cup. The steam rises in tendrils and McKelvey can already taste the stale brew, feel his guts cramping. It smells like burnt leaves and mud. One of the men is eyeing McKelvey as though he knows him, or thinks he does, trying to place the facial features against the family names of the town roster. McKelvey thinks he might recognize the old man right back, one of the old Finnish miners. The old guy is wearing a navy wool toque rolled tightly on top of his head.

“You wouldn’t be Grey McKelvey’s boy, would you?” the man finally asks.

And here it is. Forty years gone, save for a few short visits during his father’s final illness, and still they know the face and the surname, the history attached to it like a set of roots planted in this stubborn soil.

“Yes, sir. Charlie McKelvey.”

“Nick Jalonen,” the man says, and then nods to the man at his side. “And this here is George Fergus. ’Course you already met Duncan last night, Dunc Stewart. Hope you had a good trip in. What brings you back this way?”

McKelvey can see in the men’s eyes that they are sewing together memories, perhaps of his father in certain situations, or all of them together as young men, hard-bodied and full of life. How time slips away.

“Grey McKelvey, Jesus Murphy,” George Fergus says. “We had some times, didn’t we? Your dad was the toughest SOB ever ran the union.”

This stops McKelvey’s mind, for he recalls the late-night arguments in the kitchen below his bedroom as his mother and father debated the merits of union leadership and an impending strike. In the end, McKelvey believes his father turned down the nomination. He seems to recall that his father was somehow philosophically opposed to the notion of co-operatives and unions, believing each man was responsible for his own representation in this life.

“I always thought my dad shied away from the political stuff.”

This makes the trio of old-timers laugh. They eye one another in conspiracy.

“I never said he was president, or even on the executive,” Fergus says, “but make no mistake, your dad was the go-to guy. He was the balls behind the whole operation, that wildcat strike in ’54.”

The information hits McKelvey like a punch to the stomach, and for a moment he thinks he should sit down. He hasn’t eaten in eighteen hours, save for half a wilted ham sandwich bought at a gas station outside Sudbury, and this coffee has gone straight to his head. The inference that his father may have been involved, or more to the point, a leader in the strike and the ensuing violence of that historic year, it is akin to discovering the man had a second family holed up somewhere. McKelvey knows a scab was killed at the height of the strike. He knows, too, that no one was ever charged in the killing. The scab was a Native from the nearby reserve, just some guy looking to support his family. It was the 1950s and it was the North and times were different.

“He never talked about it,” McKelvey says. “I remember that year. A supply shed got blown up. A scab was killed.”

The men seem to lose themselves in private and collective memories. They look down at the floor and nod their heads. There are no smiles now, no laughter.

“Was a hard time in those days,” Duncan says. “They was goin’ to put us out of work, the way the management was running things, talk of that merger with INCO. We had families to think about. Your old man had been over in Korea, and let me tell you, his training came in handy. That scab was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

McKelvey doesn’t want to hear or learn anymore, not now, not standing here in the lobby of a one-star hotel less than twelve hours after arriving back in his home town. He drains the cup against his better judgment, tosses it in a wastebasket.

“I need a place to stay for a while,” he says. “Is there anybody in town that rents apartments or houses?”

The men shoot one another quick looks, and then Duncan smiles and moves to the desk. He opens a black address book and writes a number down on a piece of paper.

“How about your old homestead?” he says with a grin. “Carl Levesque bought up most of the Carver Company houses, including yours. He’s got some plan to tear them down and build a goddamned casino, if you can believe that. But I bet he’d take a few dollars in rent while you’re up here.”

George Fergus laughs. “The guy’d charge rent to his grandmother.”

“Welcome home,” Duncan says, and hands McKelvey the slip of paper.