Читать книгу Bewilderment - Don Gutteridge - Страница 6

Gabe was startled when the inside door of the back shed swung open just as he reached up for it. “Your supper’s on the table,” Blossom said quietly, assigning no blame. Gabe stepped into the warmth of their kitchen, into the aroma of well-simmered stew.

“Throw your jacket on the peg an’ just do your hands there in the sink.” She went over to the oven, drew out a pan of hot biscuits and plopped one on each of four waiting plates.

Gabe rolled up his shirtsleeves as far as he could and scrubbed ineffectually at the dark dye of his skin, being careful not to splash too much. The tea towel, blackened instantly, he tossed behind the garbage pail. Blossom was suddenly at his elbow: he inhaled the tart sweat of her.

“I took some stew across to Cora and the kids,” she said very softly. His question must have welled up into his face because she added almost without pause, “He may lose the left foot. They won’t know for a couple of days.”

Gabe nodded. He wanted to touch her arm, lean his cheek against hers, but he didn’t. Already she was back at the table, fussing with his plate. Something made him look past Rosie and Rennie, seated and improbably silent, to the sewing table tucked into the bay window, where two boys’ sweaters lay that had not been there yesterday: Blossom’s work, the fruit of her goodness – that same goodness which sometimes left him breathless and sometimes baffled and, occasionally, flushed with shame. Hardly a day went by that she was not at the Church gathering the castaway scraps of woollens collected there so she could pick the stitching apart to slowly and patiently salvage what otherwise would have been wasted, careful to preserve the separate colours, colours she would re-knit and weave into some fantasy only her fingers seemed to know about in advance. “I got a picture up here,” she would say, pointing to her right temple and chuckling at the happy absurdity of it, “but most of the time the needles keep goin’ till they decide to stop.” And whenever she finished such a sweater or scarf or tuque, she never failed to say, “Just because somethin’s for charity don’t mean it has to be ugly. We got enough sufferin’ without addin’ ugliness to it.”

“It’s gettin’ cold, love.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said, and started in on the stew.

Rosie – when she wasn’t peering up at him with a look that managed to combine, in equal doses, disgust, pity, embarrassment and fascination (his unwashed face was seldom uniformly tarnished, as it was now, but rather runnelled and besmirched like a gargoyle’s in a daylong rain) – alternately poked at the lumps of her stew with a fork or slurped the gravy from an oversized spoon.

Rennie, having now observed what he assumed to be a respectful ‘minute of silence,’ launched his nightly peroration in mid-flight, the inconvenience of his father’s tardy arrival and his mother’s eccentric behaviour in no way discouraging the impetus of what simply had to be said. “The socialists’ve won the election in Spain! Mr. McTaggart says it made the headlines in the Toronto papers.”

“Is that a good thing?” Blossom said.

Rennie waited until he had swallowed a nourishing morsel of stewing beef before answering, which provided Rosie the opportunity to get in an extra slurp. “Of course it is. Mr. McTaggart says it marks the first significant victory over Fascism since the War.”

“It’s nice that they get to vote,” Blossom said.

Rennie snorted, losing a carrot and two peas. “Like us, you mean?”

“Rosie, quit slurpin’ your food,” Blossom said.

“Rose,” Rosie said. “It’s Rose .”

“So we get to kick the Tories out an’ put in a bunch of so-called Liberals,” Rennie said. “So what? Mackenzie King’s just another version of R.B. Bennett – minus the fur coat an’ phoney accent.”

“R-O-S-E,” Rosie said.

“Mr. McTaggart says if he had to choose between ‘King and Chaos,’ he’d take chaos any day of the week.”

“I thought he was supposed to be teachin’ you about the Greeks an’ Romans?” Rosie said.

“Mind your own business, squirt !” Rennie said.

“Now, Rennie –” Blossom said.

“He also says the Falangists in Spain are gonna stir up a civil war, with help from Hitler and Il Duce . And if that happens, he says there’s talk of formin’ an International Brigade to go an’ fight alongside our comrades – to rid the world once and for all of the Fascist scourge.”

Blossom began to cut the remains of yesterday’s pie. “That’s just a lot of talk,” she said. “We got troubles enough right here.”

“You gonna ask Dolly Molly’s permission to join up?” Rosie said, sacrificing a slurp.

“None of your beeswax, you little snoop,” Rennie snapped at her. Then he appealed directly to the adults present: “Nobody pays any attention to a pipsqueak like her or that spyin’ four-eyed friend of hers!”

Rosie stormed out and up the stairs, trumpeting umbrage all the way.

Rennie tipped the tea from his saucer back into his cup.

“You’re old enough to know better,” Blossom said with a resigned sigh.

“Well, she’s been spreadin’ rumours all over town,” Rennie said.

Blossom slid the largest piece of pie towards Gabe and, not looking at Rennie, said, “An’ would they happen to be true?”

Rennie pulled himself up to full height in his chair. His dark curls (so like his father’s) flared out around his strong-featured face, lending conviction to the lividity and uncompromised vulnerableness of the eyes. “Molly an’ me are friends,” he said as if that assertion ought to stand without the adducement of proofs. Then, for good measure he added, “I’m gonna go to college. The last thing I need is a permanent girl friend.”

“As you say,” Blossom said. “Your father’s promised to have a long chat with Rosie. But that don’t mean you don’t have to go up there before bed an’ say you’re sorry.”

“As soon as I finish workin’ on my speech for History class. I’m supposed to give a talk on Athenian democracy and the Regina Manifesto for –”

Rennie didn’t get to complete his paragraph because something even more extraordinary than the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation occurred in the Goodfellow kitchen. Gabe, his dessert untouched, had risen from his place at head-table, from the captain’s chair that even the family scion had not yet surreptitiously sampled, and was pulling his jacket off its peg.

“Gabe –”

“I’m goin up to see the Reeve,” Gabe said.

“But –”

But Gabe was already at the front door. “About the carnival,” he called back.

“Carnival !” he heard Rennie exclaim. “How can he be thinkin’ about carnivals when the country’s –”

Then it was Blossom yelling, “Shut up! Shut up!” and from the window above the front verandah came Rosie’s muted howl: “I won’t be treated like a baby, I won’t !” Gabe was almost up to Michigan Ave. before the voices, and their clamorous confusions, died away.

The stores on Michigan Ave. had long since shut their doors against the nor’westerly whipping in off the Lake and taking unimpeded possession of thoroughfare and alleyway. Gabe pulled his collar about his exposed throat and headed into the wind until he reached a shop window which carried to an inquisitive public, in ornate Olde English lettering, this good news:

Claude Harkness, Esquire: Barber

Serving the Citizens of the Point Since 1882

(When you sat inside on a Saturday morning waiting your turn, and wondering how many of the others were doing the same, the letters floated backwards on the sun-washed glass, seemingly unintelligible, except that you knew what they said and might wonder if these were not in truth the original letters, that we all have a double of our name hidden somewhere under water or glass.) There was no light from either window of the apartment above the shop, where Breezy and Leila had transported their Punch ‘n Judy act just one day after the village had bade farewell to his beloved father.

Gabe was just about to turn around and let the wind blow him home when he heard the clink of glass somewhere behind the drawn blinds. He rapped on the door of the shop. And rapped again. Beside him, the red-and-white barber pole offered him its perpetual wink. Feeling foolish, he stroked it absently, then stamped his feet against the cold, swirling dark. The shop door opened just far enough for a single eye to make a timid appearance.

“It’s me –Gabe .”

The door inched halfway open. Breezy Harkness, still in his white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, squinted outwards as if he were looking into a bright light.

“It’s Gabber. Can I come in?”

“Gabber!” The Reeve broke into the grin that had served him so admirably for so long on the hustings or on the floor of the village tonsury (he himself did not always take the trouble to distinguish such artificial categorizations). “You want a trim?”

“No,” Gabe said. “I had a cut last Saird’y.”

“So you did.” The wind, with more than a hint of winter malice still in it, swept past them seeking the warm interior.

“I need to talk to you,” Gabe said.

The door flew open, the Reeve grasped the nearest elbow of his shy constituent, and ushered Gabe inside. Breezy flicked on the overhead lights. “Why didn’t ya say so?” he said with much-practiced heartiness. “A reeve can’t go keepin’ banker’s hours, now can he?” Through the residue of stinkum and talc that never quite abandoned barber or reeve, Gabe detected the after-spice of whiskey, or worse. Breezy waved him into the customer’s chair and sat himself down in the one his father had used for so many years. He turned both palms upwards along the leather arms of the chair, arranged his regretful look, and said, “I hope it’s not about the Relief Fund.” The palms flared slightly. “I guess you know that sorta thing is handled by Councillor Barnes and the Relief Committee. Not that people don’t often come to me about it,” he felt constrained to add, and smiled indulgently at Gabe.

Everyone knew that Reeve Harkness, with a characteristic show of magnanimity, had divested himself of any personal responsibility (and hence of any undue influence automatically bestowed by the aegis of his high office) for decisions about which of the several dozen families might qualify for some of the few and woefully inadequate dollars in the council’s Relief Fund. That such studied neutrality might pay dividends of another sort at election time in the Fall had not occurred to citizen Harkness.

“It’s not about that,” Gabe said, suddenly aware that, as the light in the room cleared some of the fog out of Breezy’s eyes, the latter was staring at him so hard his jaw, rarely observed in a resting position, had slackened and then dropped. The recovery was swift, and artful: “You fall into a coal-bin on your way over?”

Gabe flushed. He drew a finger across his chin, saw the smudge deposited there, then hopped out of the chair and began rubbing at the cracked leather seat.

“Christ, Gabber, don’t bother,” Breezy laughed. “One fat arse wrigglin’ there tomorrow’ll do the trick.” He waited for this witticism to be acknowledged, then said, “You give me a bit of a turn there for a second. I didn’t realize you’d come straight from work.”

Gabe tried to think how to explain, but was soon interrupted. The Reeve was a man who considered silence to be a form of impertinence. “I heard about poor old Tug,” he sighed. “It’s all over town. I’ve already asked Stu Barnes to call the Relief Committee together tomorrow night.”

“He might lose his leg,” Gabe said.

“Trouble is,” Breezy said, “the money’s almost gone, and it’s only March.” He looked soulfully down at his upturned palms, like the Reverend Blackadder just before addressing the Almighty whose Will could not be contravened, and said, “Our hands may be tied.”

Gabe swallowed, cleared his throat and said so loudly that the Reeve’s Adam’s apple jumped: “I come to talk about the celebration.”

Breezy’s eyebrows shot up, bushy as Billy Gilbert’s and mobile as a marionette’s in a melodrama. “On the twenty-fourth?”

Gabe nodded.

“Ahh. Well then, you an’ me better go on upstairs.”

“Leila’s off on one of her mercy missions to the township,” Breezy said, feigning a nice blend of approval and disappointment, as he spread a copy of the City Reporter on the easy chair nearest the window and watched Gabe’s tactful attempt to settle himself therein. “She won’t be back till Monday,” he sighed with the clear implication that God’s work too could not be confined to business hours. Then, without ceremony, he opened the door of a refurbished antique commode, parted some towels and pillow cases, slipped some kind of lever, and drew out a musty apothecary jar. He held it up to the lamp as if to assess the valance of its purity, gave Gabe a sideways grin, and poured out two shot-glasses of amber liquid. You could hear its sizzle across the room.

“Granny Crack’s finest,” he said. “Down the hatch!”

Gabe did as he was bid. The homemade hooch cut a purging swath all the way down. Leila Harkness, an unconverted and unrepentant Methodist, was death against the drink, and had conducted more than one crusade against its self-evident iniquities. But somehow the sanctum of Granny Crack’s ‘still’ remained free of defilement.

“We already got most of the big day planned, as you might have heard,” the Reeve said, delighted to have an audience of any kind and especially one who could be counted upon to evince a satisfying quorum of deference. “I been in continual touch with His Worship from Michigan an’ His Worship from the City, and I been invited to a crucial meetin’ in the City tomorrow night, where, I’m told on good authority, a couple of MLAs an’ maybe even a cabinet minister will put their oar in.”

Gabe waved off a second shot, a demurral that, he was relieved to see, did not discourage his host’s thirst. He was beginning to worry about how he was going to get his own oar in.

“We’ve decided to stretch the joy an’ good will over two days. We’re gonna have the fireworks on Saturday night, the twenty-second – I’m sure the old Queen’ll forgive us.” And he winked slyly, as if that deceased dowager might be lurking behind some arras. “Naturally there’ll be the usual sod-turnin’ an’ speeches on Sunday afternoon, but as this is gonna be an international celebration, we decided to hold a softball game here on our own diamond – with oldtimers from the Port and the City – oh, I argued long an’ strong, you can be sure, for our own village fellas to be part of it, but the best I could do was to hint that a couple of our own vets might be umpires. But the game’ll be played right here on Saird’y afternoon, with reporters an’ photographers from Toronto an’ Detroit an’ big-shots thick as flies on a jam tart.” The Reeve sipped and savoured his third aperitif, somewhat in the manner of a bigwig with a snifter of Rémy Martin . “No sir-ee – ah, Gabber – this little burg’ll never be the same again.” For a few hazy moments the Reeve allowed this happy presentiment to marinate reverentially in its own silence.

“I thought we might have a carnival,” Gabe said.

The Reeve blinked, as if an elder had just farted in church. “A carnival ?”

“You know, for the kids. Before the fireworks.”

The many hundreds of hours spent in committee-of-the-whole had long since prepared the Reeve for the abruptness of the non-sequitur. Even so, he found himself now casting about for some automatic response fitted to the occasion and, finding none among his vast repertoire, was compelled to say: “You mean merry-go-rounds an’ sideshows? That kind of carnival?”

“I think we could get the service clubs to give free tickets to the kids an’ get the carnies to donate some of the profits to the poor boxes: somethin’ to make it a happy time for everybody.”

Whilst decades of service in municipal affairs had taught the Reeve that there were some citizens who were temperamentally unsuited to happiness and even more who did not deserve it, he made no immediate riposte. Instead he poured himself another drink, eased back into his chair, and began staring off into the wistful distance, caring not that a pair of velveteen curtains interrupted his vision a mere yard or so away.

“I never told nobody this before,” he said, with slow solemnity,” but one time your dad an’ me played hookey to go to the carnival. Oh, I know people think a lot gets said in a barber shop, and it does, but nothin’ really gets told .”

Gabe waited.

“Your dad an’ me, we just didn’t bother goin’ back to school after lunch. We headed straight for Bayview Park – you remember the little one-horse carnivals that were still comin’ through here in your day – an’ what a time we had! Your old man – he had a knack for these things – he finds a silver dollar near the Poker Wheel, an’ we were off to the races. We went on every ride at least twice, chanked taffy apples an’ hot dogs an’ spent our last dime gettin’ in to the freak show. Jolly – that’s what we all called your dad – tells the barker we’re both eighteen-year-old midgets an’ the guy laughs so hard he lets us in. Gawd, what a sight! I can still see it, even now, it was the fat lady we really wanted to have a gander at, all four hundred pounds of her, but she’s oozin’ fat so bad they got her wrapped up in a cellophane pup-tent an’ all ten of her chins’re wobblin’ away above it, an’ both of us run outside an’ puked up in the grass.”

Gabe noticed the grandfather clock for the first time: the lull of its steadfast ticking, then the pendulum below the sound, the way it paused at the apogee of each swing as if it realized, for the millionth time, that there was no escape in any direction, yet it hesitated nonetheless, prizing each willed stasis, a moment of refusal between necessities.

“Next day, when we get back to school, we give Miss Prime the notes your dad wrote for us – he could imitate any kind of writin’– but for some reason she thinks mine is okay but Jolly’s is faked. So off to the principal he goes. An’ what do ya think he does then? He confesses. But try as he might, ol’ man Pierpoint can’t get Jolly to say he didn’t go to the carnival by himself. Finally the old bugger gives up an’ proceeds to strap him. We could hear him yellin’ all over the school: ‘Goodfellow, you’re a truant and a liar to boot!’”

The Reeve availed himself of another drink. “But that’s the kinda man your dad was, Gabber.” He sighed. “I always wanted to tell you this but never had a chance: if your father’d lived through the War, he’d’ve been reeve of this here town. And I’d’ve been the first in line to vote for him.”

Gabe rose to leave: Blossom would be worried by now.

“We can’t have a carnival, Gabber – on the twenty-fourth or any other time. I’d like to help, I really would. But my hands are tied.” Breezy touched Gabe’s arm. “The last carnival we had in here, back in ‘twenty-nine, we practically had to read the Riot Act, and afterwards the Council passed a bylaw sayin’ that in the future any sponsor, includin’ the village, would have to post a three-hundred-dollar bond to cover damages an’ mayhem. An’ right now we ain’t even got enough money in the till to feed poor Tug Matheson an’ his kids. Also, you may’ve forgot, but the dance pavilion, now the property of the termites, still covers about half of the old carnival site. We’d have to get permission from Blackleg Doyle to use his front pasture, an’ you could extract blood from a tombstone before that ever happens.” He might have gone on to mention that, although a carnival would undoubtedly provide diversions for the young and less discriminating members of the community, it might at the same time impeach the dignity of the more vital and lofty ceremonies planned for the occasion. But he didn’t: enough was enough.

“I see,” Gabe said. “Well, it was only an idea that come to me.”

Breezy grinned till his eyeballs wobbled. “Don’t you worry about it, Gabber. I’m here to listen. But I’ve found it’s usually best if people leave most of the thinkin’ to the men they elected to do it for ‘em.”

Gabe put on his cap and made his way down the front stairs in the dark. Up behind him he could hear newspaper being crumpled.

Blossom was in the kitchen, knitting away at what appeared to be a boy’s tuque: blue as wintry sky and spangled with white and yellow stars or hazy moon perhaps. That there seemed so little connection between the size or shape of a person’s fingers and the adroit feminine arts, such as sewing or knitting or playing the piano, never ceased to be a source of small but redoubtable wonder to Gabe. His own mother had had hands elegant enough to grace the tables of an aristocracy (should the country ever have boasted one) and she could manoeuvre them like a ballerina in mid-leap, but a knitting needle or crochet hook confounded them. Even now he could picture their cold beauty: folded primly – in the frozen pose she would take with her forever into Heaven.

“I got enough wool here for a couple of tuques,” Blossom said, peering up from under the half-spectacles she sometimes used when her eyes tired.

Gabe hung his cap and jacket on their pegs. “I guess it’s time I washed up,” he said.

“There’s extra hot water; I ain’t had time for a bath.” Her needles never missed a click. Her fingers did their tiny, acappella jig while her lips kept the count with a slight ventriloquist-tremor.

Gabe paused at the cellar door. “Bertha won’t take charity, you know.”

“Them boys of hers’ve gotta have clothes: Winter ain’t over yet.”

“I think she keeps ‘em home from school when it gets too cold out.”

“I’m not worried,” Blossom said. “You’ll find a way.”

After scrubbing himself down and then doing it over again until the water grew sluggish, Gabe came back upstairs and padded into the sitting-room. He felt Blossom’s querying stare, but did not interrupt her work. ‘Lux Presents Hollywood’ was halfway through; he sat down in the armchair anyway and pretended to listen. For a while he was able to think of nothing, neither the heightened clamour of love gone awry on the airwaves nor the jumble of hurts and perplexities that had made up his day. Then at last and inevitably some thought announced itself: he was sitting in this same chair – it seemed to be mere days or weeks ago – and Rosie was on one knee and Rennie the other, and he was telling them for the umpteenth time the same trilogy of tales his father had told him in the same room (on a different chair): The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the Beanstalk andThe Pied Piper of Hamelin , and Rosie would tremble for the littlest goat but then cry when the troll got his just deserts, cheer when Jack scarpered with the golden goose yet command him, seconds later, to ‘stop chopping this minute,’ while Rennie whooped at the troll’s grim demise and vocally assisted Jack and his justifiable axe. But Rosie and Rennie together and as one would beg him to let the children of Hamelin plug their ears against all perilous piping, to make the greedy townsfolk recant in the nick of time, and have the rat-catching troubadour relent at the cliff’s edge and laugh merrily at his own huge musical joke. But he never did. Nor had his father.

Some time later he heard Blossom say, “I’m bushed. I’m gonna turn in.” She did not need to say why.

Gabe switched off the ten o’clock news and walked quietly up the front stairs. Rennie’s door was ajar, his desk lamp was still burning, but the boy himself had fallen asleep over the Regina Manifesto or some other tract with an equally arcane and bellicose title. Gabe slipped open the door to Rosie’s room. She lay asleep on the bedspread, fully clothed. Gabe found the Hudson Bay blanket and covered her. Her breathing seemed to deepen and relax, as if her body at least could still acknowledge some small, gratuitous gesture. Once – and it was not so long ago, of that much he was absolutely sure – he had only to open his arms and Rosie would fling herself into them, not caring what part of her impetuous body landed first or where. And he would simply hug her: no word to be said before or after – all that needed to be confirmed or forgiven or expiated was communicated in the action itself. Sometimes one of them needed to clasp more tightly or lingeringly than the other, but such variance was itself part of the wordless understanding. That was gone now. Some new phase of her girlhood had already brightened and, like the moon whose mysteries she replicated, there would be shadow encumbering its light. Gabe ran a soot-stained hand very gently across the spill of her hair, as pink and virginal as it ought to be. Rosie moved, and Gabe hastily left the room, glad that he was in his stocking feet.

Glad, too, though it gave him no pleasure, that Blossom was snoring wispily and he could crawl in beside her without disturbing her rest. He lay on his back, knowing that whatever grief the day had brought, the exhaustion which often seemed the only fruit of his labours would demand its due: he would sleep.

A hand, puffed with warmth, touched his with its tenderness.

“It ain’t your fault Tug got hurt,” Blossom said.