Knucklehead & Other Stories (13 page)

The cowboy nods. The mother fusses the shirt, tucking the lame arm inside. The doctor washing his hands again. The boy slinks further into a corner. The cowboy: “How much do I owe?” The doctor: “It's not necessary. I'm on vacation.” The mother: “Stay for supper, please.” The doctor holds his wet hands up expectantly: “Marty, get me a towel.” The boy fetches a towel from the table, moving between the awkward dance of mother, cowboy, shirt and father-physician.

Sudden silence and stillness. Three snaps on the bottom of the shirt the best that can be done. The father's hands dry, towel thrown in the sink. The mother poised between the cowboy and the table, as if there's something more to be done. The boy stands by his father.

Where do I stand? The scene plays itself out on the screen of my memory, the images (re)collected and transformed. Like a motion picture camera, my gaze tracks around the room, zooming in on detail, craning overhead. I do not exist. At Sweetwater Lake, I can place the boy beside the father, perhaps one step to the side and a half-step behind. But at that other, unnamed lake, where do I place the self? Where does the self place “I?”

The cowboy in motion: “Let me pour you a drink, at least.” He plucks a couple of tumblers from a shelf, slides to the table. Glasses down, he hitches up one leg on a chair, draws a half-empty flask from his boot, spins the top deftly from the bottle, letting it fall to the floor. An economy of motion that belies one-handedness. Whisky drained from bottle to glasses, flask tossed flat-down on table.

The father: black-bag face closed tight. The shiny skin over his cheek rippling as he clenches his jaw, then relaxes, and clenches again. The father takes a step forward. The mother slips between the father and the table. The father seeing through. Sharp clack: the mother's teeth together as she draws her mouth closed. The boy glances from bottle to father to mother and back to the bottle on the table. A turn on her heel, the mother moves stiff-legged to the other room. Calling out: “Morden. Come with me.” The boy remains.

Neither man smiles. Clink of glasses, whisky sliding into their mouths, down their gullets with a gulp. They do not speak. Burning gasps. They do not look at the boy. It is the first time the boy has seen his father take a drink.

The last time I saw my father take a drink: the day that he died. Physician-father. (Un)mythmaking. Alcohol. Where are the bottles of my childhood? In cupboards bare, in empty suitcases, in the trunk of the car. In the bole of a tree, under the eaves, buried in the ground. In a boot top, in the lining of a jacket, in a black bag. The first time I saw my father take a drink: he'd patched a broken cowboy at that other lake. Today is my first birthday, 365 days since step one: I admit that I am powerless over alcohol. I am 39 years old. I remember the cowboy.

The mother: “Marty. Marty, come on in here.” Her voice soft, far away. The boy puts one foot in front of the other, then another and another and another. He is out of the kitchen. The front room: the mother is folded like an S on the couch, sitting in one corner, legs tucked under thighs, shoulders sloped. Bare knees almost covered by Butterick sundress. One listless hand plucks threads from the nap of the upholstery. Out the window, the pink and orange sunset casts the dark across the still waters of Sweetwater Lake. A boat speeds by, towing the twins for the last ski of the day. On the beach, a brother and a sister pat sand-cake ramparts.

The chirp of the spring on the screen door in the kitchen, as it expands and compresses, the rattle of wood and mesh as it closes. The sound of the station wagon starting up and driving away towards the hotel beer parlour. The boy reaches, fingertips touch his mother just at the hairline.

My daughter reaches to touch my brow. She points to each part of my face, and recites the naming game she has learned from her grandmother, that I learned from my grandmother. My forehead: “Fore-bumper,” she says. An eye: “Eye-blinker.” The other: “Hood-winker.” “Nose-smeller.” “Mouth-eater.” My daughter touches my chin: “Chin-chucker, chin-chucker, chin-chucker.” Her tiny fingers tickle at the lump in my throat. Today is my first birthday.

The Man in the
CAT Hat

“Don't worry about it. That's just the way he thinks—” The man who spoke wore a
CAT
Power Equipment hat. He turned from one of the rust-stained urinals. The other man wore a neck brace and stood in front of a row of mirrors that formed a realistic frieze along the wall above the sinks. The man in the
CAT
hat quit talking when he saw the poet enter the restroom. The man with the neck brace also saw the poet. He looked away from that illusion and examined the illusion of a blemish on his reflected face. The poet staggered to the centre urinal and noisily unzipped his fly.

The man in the
CAT
hat went over and stood beside the man with the neck brace. He looked in the mirror at himself, at the man with the neck brace, at the back of the pissing poet.

Urine splashed steadily on stained porcelain. The two men at the sinks fidgeted. The room, usually filled with the violent melodies of argument, filtered jukebox, dope deals and running water, was silent. The man in the
CAT
hat and the man with the neck brace swallowed their words as they came up in their mouths. The man with the neck brace, thin and pale, drew a broken comb through thin pale hair. He watched the reflection of the poet turning towards him from the urinal

(who was me, drunk, ever-so-sensitive to reality: I had walked into the toilet and saw two guys, one doing up his fly and saying, “Don't worry about it, kid. That's just the way he thinks,” and the other standing by the sinks toying with his neck brace. Making sure I didn't stare or seem to be paying attention, I swaggered to the urinal to the left and quietly unzipped my fly. I focussed on this living vignette, trying to fix an image of the situation from the inadequate sensory information I could glean from my surroundings. On the chrome elbow of the urinal pipe I could make out the funhouse image of two men facing each other. Through the wash of water and muffled bar noise, I heard the breathing of the two men as they mumbled: one hard and even, the other raspy and sick. I heard the soft whisper of a broken comb passing through Brylcreemed hair. My sensitive ears heard all, my sensitive eyes saw all. I turned from the urinal and looked straight into the reflected eyes of a man by the sinks)

and he said, “I dunno. Maybe I'm paranoid.”

Knucklehead

Zelle
@
18 months
He will build a fence. The highest fence allowed by law. A thick, high, soundproof impenetrable fence. A fence without chinks or cracks between boards. He will allow no knotholes through which to peer, no handholds or footholds on which to hoist oneself. A fence sunk into the ground under which no small dog, no rodent, no child can burrow. A Berlin Wall, a Great Wall of China, a Hadrian's Wall, a Maginot Line. When he finishes the fence, he will plant a high hedge, a hedge that will grow skyward past the fence, past the height of the house itself. A thick, high hedge.

He has downloaded the development permit application and all the necessary supporting documents from the city website (the same website where he accessed the Animal Control Bylaw). He spends every tidbit of spare time planning and designing the fence. He uses his laptop and the
CADD
tools from his work. He knows how much concrete he will need for the foundation and the pillars, how many pallets of cinder blocks, how much sand, how many cubic feet of earth he will need to displace. He knows how much it will cost. He develops a budget and a construction schedule. He refines the design, consults his engineering references, revises and revises again. The fence will be a marvel. The fence will be a neighbourhood landmark. He will name it.

One morning, Colm lies in bed, staring at the ceiling growing lighter in the dawn's twilight, visualizing his fence. Beverly is still asleep beside him, curled around a pillow so that her spine presses against his ribs. He listens to the sounds of the house. Zelle in her room: she is awake, playing in her crib, singing to herself, talking in her own language to her teddy and monkey. Doxie's toenails click on the tile in the kitchen as she moves from her bed by the back door to the dog dish. He can hear her lap water. It is just a few days past the fall equinox, and without looking at a clock, Colm places the time at ten to seven.

He hears the Harley next door sputter to life. It's the wrong day, he thinks. Sunday is the day his neighbour starts his bike, not Saturday. And it's too early in the morning. Anything is possible these days. His dog poisoned, his car stereo stolen, twice. His garbage cans on fire. The phone stopped ringing mysteriously only because he opted for call screening. He has subscribed to a security service that has alarmed the doors and windows of his house and garage. The fence is next. He will break ground in the spring. He needs all winter to save the money.

The motorcycle next door has been slipped into gear, and he listens as the percussive slap-slap of the engine drives away, then hears it coming around closer again to the front of the house. His curiosity is piqued. In the last year and a half or so, he has never seen it ridden. His neighbour, Ted Cope, just starts it and lets it run. He never rides it anywhere. Colm gets out of bed and peeks between the slats of the blinds. It is not Ted but another man astride the idling bike in front of the house next door. Helmetless, approximately the same size, age, shape and colouring as Ted, but with short hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. Ted is standing on the lawn. He's wearing work boots and decent jeans, and a lined denim jacket. The bark-less terrier stands on the lawn, tethered to a leash which Ted has secured to his belt loop. As the man shuts off the engine and dismounts, Colm realizes he is wearing a leather vest with the patch of the most feared outlaw motorcycle gang in the world.

“Oh boy,” Colm mutters.

Beverly shifts, and rubs her eyes. “What's going on?”

“You'll never believe it.”

Beverly doesn't answer, she just rises and gets on with her day.

By eight o'clock, a half-dozen cars and pickup trucks have parked on the street. The Harley has been pulled up on the lawn. A dozen or fifteen men mill about in Ted's back yard next to Colm and Beverly's house, drinking coffee and beer. Boxes of Timbits are stacked on a table. Colm peeks out one of the windows and watches a man with a shaved head and a snake tattooed on the back of his neck toss bits of chocolate donut to the terrier and to Ted's other dog, the rottweiler.

“What is going on over there,” Colm says.

“Why don't you just go ask, for christ's sake,” Beverly says. She's wiping the porridge and pancake syrup from the table. Zelle is banging on her xylophone.

At nine o'clock, a delivery truck from Home Depot arrives. Someone moves the motorcycle again, and the men form a work line to unload the truck. They stack four-by-fours, two-by-fours, sheets of plywood, boards in piles. Beverly pulls her jacket on, grabs her purse. She has her keys and a grocery list in her hand. Zelle runs over to grab her leg. “Mommy, Mommy. Car. Me car.” Beverly picks up Zelle and kisses her. “No, baby Zed. You stay with Dad. Mommy's going shopping.”

Zelle starts to cry then pushes away. Colm comes over to take her. He kisses Beverly. “Don't forget the kiwi.”

“Got it on the list.”

“And the coffee beans.”

“Right.

“Soy milk.”

“Mmmm. See you in a couple of hours.”

“Why don't you go for a coffee or something too? Spend the morning at Chapters? Zelle and I'll be fine, won't we kiddo?” Colm looks to the child in his arms. She's rubbing her eyes.

“I might,” Beverly says. She kisses Colm and Zelle again and leaves.

Colm watches from the window, coaxing Zelle. “Say ‘bye-bye, Mom.' Bye, Mom.” Zelle isn't crying, but her bottom lip is curled. She buries her face in Colm's shoulder. Colm pulls a Kleenex from the pocket of his shirt where he always seems to have one, wipes her nose, then puts it back. A couple of the men look up from their work to check Beverly out. One of them says something and Beverly stops as she opens the car door. She's smiling and says something back. The men laugh and she does too. She gives a little wave of her hand to them, gets in her car and drives away.

At ten after nine, Colm glances out the kitchen window. They are pulling down the chain-link fence between his house and Ted's. Colm scoops Zelle up from where she's banging her toy train on the floor and heads out the back door, Doxie at his heels.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “What are you doing to this fence?”

A man with a pair of wirecutters straightens up. Colm realizes it's the Hell's Angel, he's just not wearing his patch. His
T
-shirt has a slogan on it: Any Questions, Dickhead? The man smiles. “Hey, you're just in time to help us out here. I'm Dave.” He holds out his hand to shake.

“Help?” Colm shifts Zelle to his right side.

She's pointing to the tool in the man's hand, trying to lean over and grab it. “That? That, Daddy?”

“Help with what?”

“Building a fence,” another man says from the deck.

“Tell him I don't need any help.” Ted's voice, coming from inside the house through an open kitchen window.

“You can't,” Colm says. Zelle is squirming, wanting to get down. Doxie sniffs cautiously at a gap in the fence. Ted's rottweiler rattles the chain at its neck, but stays where it is under a chair. Colm can't see the terrier, but hears its strange soundless bark inside. “You can't build a fence.”

“We are,” says the man with the snake on his neck. Ted comes to the back door of his house. “Ask him if he's going to call the City on us,” he says to Dave.

The men laugh.

“You can't build a fence. I'm going to build a fence,” Colm says.