Cadillac Cathedral (15 page)

The gravel had been sprayed with oil, which he supposed would keep the dust down but did nothing to stop the stones from throwing themselves at the underside of the truck.

Something in the truck bed bounced and rattled and bashed about. Through the small back window Arvo could see three metal garbage cans crashing against one another, sliding and rolling and bouncing off the sides of the truck-bed.

The sense of unease he’d felt when they’d left the highway had become something much worse. They had not only got themselves off the intended track, they had lost Myrtle Birdsong’s hearse. He felt a little crazy to find himself on his absurd chase, trusting Sandy
Macgregor and this rough road to take him to the Cadillac hearse so they could deliver it back to civilization.

Herbie ran a hand along the dashboard, clearing away some of the dust. “My grandma owned a pickup like this once. Drove me down the Oregon coast to meet my cousins on … I forget which side. We played in the sand dunes until we dropped. It was like being in Saudi Arabia. There wasn’t no camels but we rolled and slid and buried my cousin alive. I forget his name.”

“You dig him out?” Sandy said.

“I guess,” Herbie said.

“You don’t remember?”

Herbie shrugged. “He was a mean little shit. I never seen him after that.”

The oil was keeping most of the dust down, but the road here was in such poor shape they had to go slow enough for Sandy to see the pot-holes in time to avoid them. The land on either side had been cleared once — but the large stumps had not been removed and new deciduous trees had sprung up amongst them — mostly alder — though Arvo could see one young pine growing out of the top of a wide, tilted stump.

What if the “Enrights” had set off in some other direction in their tow truck — dragging the hearse? Or ditched the hearse somewhere in the bush? Arvo imagined throwing Herbie out onto the road. He would like to put his hands around Sandy Macgregor’s neck.

Of course Macgregor was not responsible for this. Not even Herbie could be held responsible. The only one to blame was the old fool who didn’t think to convince Herbie that they should delay the visit to Macgregor’s motel until they were on their way home.

Despite this frustrating pace, they were gradually gaining on a long-legged young man who strode with swinging arms along the
right-hand side of the road. As they came up beside him — Macgregor slowing to a crawl — the young man turned and raised a hand in what may have been a greeting. He smiled wide enough to show most of his teeth as he took hold of the railing behind Arvo’s door and hoisted himself up and over to join the slamming garbage cans in the back.

“Hold on tight, Stewart,” Macgregor shouted. “This next little stretch could shake you right off of there.”

Stewart slapped a hand on the roof to give the go-ahead.

“We should’ve asked him if he saw a hearse go by,” Arvo said.

“Stewart?” Macgregor shook his head. “He lives back in the bush — probably didn’t step out on the road till he heard us coming.”

What if the hearse had been stolen not by the Enrights to cut down on funeral expenses but by joy-riders whose idea of fun was to drive it through the roughest terrain they could find until it began to fall apart? The coffin would be slamming about in the back, windows would be broken. Cynthia’s flowers overturned. The tires would not hold out long against this kind of abuse. Any minute now they would turn a corner and find it abandoned, sitting low on four flat tires.

They passed by a swampy area, where moss hung from living trees, and tall snags scarred by fire stood up in the mud. Arvo could smell the gassy stench of rotting vegetation. He supposed frogs must have been croaking until they’d heard these rattling garbage cans approach.

He tried to keep the irritation from his voice. “This fellow that’s sitting between us told me this road would take us to the highway but he didn’t mention it was like driving down a dry riverbed.”

Of course losing the hearse like this made him wonder about his reasons for making this journey. Was he being punished now for his ambitions or was he being saved from making a fool of himself? In some civilizations he supposed he would have been condemned to
wander these back roads for ever, or at least until he’d recognized and acknowledged and paid for the foolishness of his ambitions. Somewhere in his house there was a copy of
The Kalevala
belonging to his father’s mother. In Finnish, of course. He would not be surprised if somewhere in that book it would be possible to find someone sidetracked by his own stupidity or absurd ambition onto a road that led eventually to hell.

He’d never read the whole story — he’d forgotten most of the little Finnish he’d picked up from his folks — but he could remember his visiting grandfather muttering his disgust at Arvo’s inability to read the country’s national epic in its original language — at least this was how his mother had translated the old man’s words. Grandson and grandfather could not speak directly to one another but the grandson could recognize disapproval in the old man’s eyes.

It was strange to think that if you lived long enough you could see, in your memory’s eye, living images of your grandfather as a man much younger than yourself — not frozen in lifeless photos but actually climbing a rickety ladder to the top, or turning a somersault in a haystack, or steering a car with fifty-year-old hands.

Like his mother, his grandfather might have thought of his tool box as his
Sampo
, offering him protection. But had he remembered that, in
The Kalevala
, once the blacksmith had gone to the cold Northland, that “man-eating, fellow-drowning place” — words that sent a chill through Arvo even now — it had been stolen by “wanton Lemminkainen?” Or was it by a sorceress? He could believe a sorceress might be living down this terrible road.

After creeping up a slight grade where the road stayed close to a narrow creek that trickled downhill alongside them, they came to a small field of sloppy haystacks, a clearing in the forest surrounded by a fence of sun-bleached cedar posts that leaned this way and that,
causing the barbed wire to sag in places nearly to the ground. Beyond the field a dirt driveway led up a slope towards a tall unpainted farmhouse beside which a crowd had gathered beneath a large blue plastic tarp propped up on tall stakes. A cover against sun, he supposed, or the possibility of rain.

Not everyone was under the plastic sheet, but those who were appeared to be sitting at a long table, probably eating. A great shout of laughter suddenly went up.

“Enrights,” Sandy McGregor said.

When they’d slowed down to approach the driveway, Stewart had leapt down off the truck bed to trot ahead and open the gate.

“There’s a casket up there,” Herbie said. “Across a pair of sawhorses. See — next to the bar?”

“I don’t see a bar,” Arvo said.

“Over to the left,” Macgregor said. “A plywood table loaded down with bottles. There beside it — a coffin with the lid open. That’ll be Grandpa Enright being treated to his final bit of air before they cart him off. One hundred three years old. Over forty grandchildren, all of them smart.”

“How do you know they’re smart?” Arvo asked.

“Because once they left home most of them never came back, except when one of them died. The old man couldn’t stop bragging about them. One’s a big-time TV announcer now. Another’s a banker. It shows you can never know what’s gonna crawl outa the woods when you’re looking the other way.”

A kind of silence fell over the crowd when Macgregor’s pickup pulled onto the rutted drive. A few of the men left the others and hurried over. Women stepped out from under the tarp to watch, standing with their arms crossed. A few of them wore aprons over their dresses.

The first man to reach them saluted Macgregor, then came around to welcome Arvo by shaking his hands.

“We’ve come for the hearse,” Macgregor said. “This here is the man that owns it. One of your lot accidentally drove it home. Where you hiding it?”

“We’re the Enright family here,” the first man said to Arvo. “I’m Jeremy. This here’s my cousin Dick. We’re gathered here to pay our respects to our grandpa. All of us are the seeds of his loins! Well, some are married to us, some are friends.”

“I’m brought you down some drinks,” said a chubby young man in a suit. “This here’s cold lemonade for drivers.” He handed a tall glass to Macgregor. “This here’s a taste of Grandpa’s blackberry wine for passengers.” He handed a glass of dark red liquid to Arvo, who had got out to stand beside the truck. He offered another to Herbie, who’d stayed inside the cab and shook his head to refuse.

“Take it,” the man said. “You can’t refuse something on the funeral day of the man that made it!”

Herbie was startled enough to accept the glass and drink more quickly than he ought to. Once he’d caught his breath he said, “That was pretty good.”

“Now, naturally you’ve come to pay your respects. Leastwise, you’re not going anywhere without. Come up this way. He’s waiting. The old bastard, he’s probably watching us right now, trying to figure out where he knows you from. He knew everybody once. Hell, he was related to everybody once. Of course he knew Sandy. But not you,” he said to Arvo. “You’re not an Enright yourself, I take it.”

“I’m not. No.”

“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be related. Enrights have married into just about every breed of human and wild beast in this part of the world. If you went up under the plastic there and called out
your name there’s bound to be someone shout back
You sonofabitch, you married my cousin’s second daughter by his fourth marriage
. Never fails. Any fool can come in off the road and discover he’s fifty-seventh cousin to someone here.”

“As I said,” Sandy Macgregor reminded them, “we hear that this man’s hearse was accidentally delivered here this afternoon. He’s come to take it off your hands.”

“Not yet, you’re not,” the man said to Arvo. “You haven’t said hello to Grandpa Enright yet.” He led Arvo by the sleeve up the dirt driveway to the tarp, where people parted in order to let him through to the casket on its pair of sawhorses. Arvo had no desire to gaze down into a dead man’s face but supposed a refusal would cause offence.

“Not there,” Jeremy Enright said, putting a hand on Arvo’s arm. “There’s no one in the coffin yet. This here is Grandpa Enright beside it. Great-grandpa, to be exact. Great-great-grandpa to some.”

Great-great-grandpa Enright had been wrapped in heavy Hudson’s Bay blankets and propped up in a green plastic lounge chair beside his coffin. A knitted wool hat had been pulled down far enough to cover his ears. Only the bare necessities of eyes and nose and mouth were visible in a face so wrinkled it might have been removed and wrung out like a wet rag and only half-heartedly reattached. Arvo looked with some confusion into this face until he saw that two milky eyes seemed to register his presence.

“Arvo,” Arvo said, though he had no idea if the old man could hear. If there was a hand to shake it must have been buried somewhere inside the blankets. At any rate the name was met with no sign of having been heard or recognized, let alone acknowledged.

“Grandpa predicted tomorrow for his day to die, so we decided to have his funeral party while he was still around to enjoy it. He can’t
exactly take part but he can watch, whenever he’s not dozed off.”

“He knows what this is?”

“Oh, he knows. We planned it a day early in case he miscalculated, but I expect he’ll be right on time. He always has been. We think of it as a going-away party. You’re welcome to join us. There’s enough food laid out for twice this crowd. We’re expecting more to turn up any minute.”

Arvo stepped back from the guest-of-honour and turned to Jeremy Enright. “My hearse?”

For a moment Jeremy Enright looked confused. Then, “Oh, dammit,” he said. “Howie was so pleased with what he found we didn’t want to spoil his mood when he brought it home. He thought he was doing a big favour for Grandpa. We intended to take it back to Sandy’s place right after the burial.”

“This man can’t wait around for that,” Sandy Macgregor said. “He has to deliver it today.”

“Oh, shoot!” Jeremy said. “We shouldn’t have showed it to Grandpa. You could tell he was pleased to know he’d be spending time in that beauty. We put it away in the tractor shed ’til it’s needed. Come.” He led the way towards a large sun-bleached cedar-shake barn with a sway-back roof. “You knew one of the tires is low?”

“I did not,” Arvo said.

This damn road would be the cause. When you thought of how it shook up Sandy Macgregor’s truck you could only imagine how brutal it must have been for the hearse. One of those bloody potholes had done it in.

A burst of laughter from under the tarp. Maybe the lot of them were making jokes about the confused strangers who’d come looking for a hearse they hadn’t been smart enough to keep their eye on. Or maybe Grandpa Enright had stood up out of his lounge chair to
perform a tap dance for his kin. This seemed to be that sort of family.

The guilty tow-truck was parked up beside a sagging barn, its original colour and company identity covered by a dull reddish paint meant for undercoating. In the lean-to shed beside it, the Cathedral hearse sat with its left rear axle resting on a block of wood. A young man sat on a stool nearby with an inner tube laid across his lap. The tire and an open patching kit lay on the rough concrete beside his foot.

A small boy sat behind the steering wheel, looking pleased with himself.

“Get down out of there!” Jeremy said. “Quick!”

The kid scowled, and was not very quick, but when Jeremy raised a threatening hand he dragged himself out from behind the wheel and leapt to the ground. Yet stayed to see what would happen next.

Macgregor explained: “Boys, this here’s that hearse’s owner that’s just arrived.”

“We didn’t find no ownership papers in her,” the man with the inner tube said, without looking up from his work.

“I carry all the proof of ownership on me,” Arvo said. He did not add
in my head
. “Rescued her from a life of forced labour. Now I’m delivering her to the daughter of the original owner, who is long deceased.”