Knucklehead & Other Stories (16 page)

“And he looks after his grandmother.”

“What?” Colm has forgotten the three generations next door. He remembers now that Lydia's mother lives with them. “She must be ancient.”

“Hmm. She's in her nineties. I didn't meet her. She's bedridden.”

“Ted looks after her.”

“Well, yes. Lydia goes to work every day, so Edward stays home. He works on his leather and looks after his grandmother.” Gaddie is standing at the door, bag in one hand, the other on the doorknob. “I've got to get going. Tom and Hazel are coming over and we're going to the
IMAX
tonight.”

“He's an idiot,” Colm says. “I pity his grandmother.”

Zelle lets go of her side of the rattle. She tips back. Her heels come up. This time she goes over backwards and her head bumps on the blanketed floor. A second's hesitation as she gathers her breath, then she opens her mouth. Her eyes screw shut and tears spring from the corners. She cries.

“Oh, bring her over here so GaGa can kiss her better. My boots are wet, I'll track mud across the room. Colm. Bring her to GaGa. Bring her here.” Gaddie holds her arms out.

Zelle
@
less than zero
Six months after their return to Canada, Beverly shipped herself and her few possessions west on the Greyhound, and moved with Colm and his few possessions into a second floor flat in an old house on Royal Avenue. They purchased the first things that they jointly owned:

☐ A futon that folded into a couch

☐ A console stereo with one working speaker and an 8-track player

☐ A kitchen table with chromium-plated legs and three mismatched chairs with split vinyl seats

Over the next few years, they lived in the basement of a walk-up apartment on Cameron Avenue, shared a house with another couple in Bowness, spent three months travelling in Asia and six more in Australia, where Colm worked as a labourer in a sugar factory and Beverly as a chambermaid in a guesthouse. They got married on a Thursday afternoon on a train platform in a small town on the coast by the Great Barrier Reef. Back in Canada, they house-sat on an acreage near Millarville while Colm commuted by motorcycle to the U of C to complete his engineering degree. They took a one-bedroom in a highrise in the Beltline, then finally an aging rowhouse in Lower Mount Royal. Colm got a job with an international engineering firm. Beverly sewed costumes, bought props, designed, stage managed, ran lights for theatres. Colm still had his motorcycle, in parts now, and his cookware. Beverly had her Pfaff and even more fabric and clothes. They made shelves from chimney bricks and old boards. They had a toaster oven.

Zelle
@
6 months
One Sunday in October, Zelle sleeps soundly in the garage. The previous owner has installed a small oscillating fan, barely the width of a person's hand, in the corner of the window facing the house. Its steady hum and slow back-and-forth captivate Zelle and lull her. When Beverly needs a nap, Colm bundles Zelle into her car seat, hauls her to the garage and sets her up on the workbench. Soon her cries subside, replaced by the even breathing of sleep. Colm eventually breaks the spell the fan possesses when he tries to move it into Zelle's nursery. Away from the garage, it fails to soothe her—her fits of crying escalate to face-purpling apoplexy.

Colm opens the overhead door and stands in the lane behind his property. He basks in the autumn sun as it casts its warmth and light onto his upturned face. Above, the clear sky hangs like a blue dome, unmarked by clouds save for the contrail of a jet five miles high. Up and down the lane, behind his neighbours' houses, green and yellow and orange bags full of leaves squat by the gates, ready for the Monday garbage pick up. A squirrel scampers along the overhead wires, its cheeks bulging with forage from bird feeders. Somewhere in the middle distance, a chainsaw whines. Next to his leg, Doxie utters a slow growl in the direction of the squirrel. He pats her head and scratches behind her ear, and the dog lopes back into the garage where she lies down on a scrap of carpet.

Colm hauls out the five-gallon plastic pail full of solvent that he uses as a parts bath and places it in the sunshine out on the driveway. He collects the pieces of the motorcycle transmission from the workbench and drops them into the bucket outside. Sitting on a folding chair, with a pair of heavy black rubber gloves pulled up to his elbows, he cleans the parts, pulling each one from the solvent, scrubbing with an assortment of brushes, scrapers, emery cloth and rags. He lays the cleaned parts out on some cardboard, putting each in its place, so that he constructs an exploded diagram of the final assembly. Where he sits, he can see Zelle as she sleeps. He concentrates on the details of his work, the close scrutiny of cogs and gears for nicks and stress cracks, checking bushings and bearings for wear. He doesn't hear Ted Cope bash his way out the back door, and for once the terrier is quiet.

Colm startles when the Copes' garage door cracks open with a sudden wrenching sound; the chain on the opener chatters as it lifts. The smell of marijuana drifts into the afternoon. Colm checks Zelle—she stirs, then stills. Doxie lifts her head and watches Colm. Ted Cope saunters out of his garage. He is well over six feet. His gut protrudes, as big and solid as a granite boulder. He is barefoot, and his yellow toenails look like talons. In lieu of pants, he sports a pair of Bermuda shorts cut from a fabric that looks like the burlap of coffee sacks. His shirt is a red and black-checked lumberjack number. His uncombed hair hangs in hanks past his shoulders, no ponytail today. He holds the terrier under one arm, and appears to be feeding it a foot-long frozen frankfurter. He looks over at Colm and nods.

“Howdy neighbour,” he says. Colm stands up. He is holding the spline in his rubber-gloved hand. “Hi,” he replies. Colm and Beverly have been in their house four or five months. This is the first conversation either of them has had with Ted. He looks at the motorcycle part Colm holds, takes in the clean parts on the cardboard. “You got a bike,” he says.

“Yes,” Colm replies. “BSA Lightning. Time for a rebuild. Again.”

“British hog,” Ted says, and snorts as if half in laughter and half in contempt. “Got an old ‘47 hard tail. Knucklehead.” He nods his head towards his garage. “Restored her from the ground up.”

“Really,” Colm says. He has been curious about the rumble of the
V
-twin on Sunday afternoons. “Can I have a look?”

“Knock yourself out.” Ted takes another stick of meat from the pocket of his shorts and pokes it into the snout of the dog in his arms. “Man, this guy loves his frozen wieners. Puppy popsicles.” Doxie trots out and stands by Colm, licking her lips as she watches the little dog. The terrier stops long enough to stare back at Doxie and give a sharp bark of warning. Then it resumes eating. Colm checks Zelle to ensure she is still asleep, then walks over to the other garage.

Amid the clutter—45-gallon drums, piles of unidentifiable vehicle parts, a stack of what appears to be animal hides, a greasy couch, boxes of canning jars, several lawn mowers, the hood of a truck set on blocks to serve as a table of sorts—the motorcycle shines like a polished gem. The Knucklehead motor pancakes the classic Harley-Davidson twin-
V
engine design, but it looks anything but old. The bike gleams, glossy black, deep blue enamel and chrome. The big stainless coil springs under the saddle offer the only rear suspension. The saddle itself is a work of art. Black leather as polished as a cadet's boots. Leatherwork around the rim of the seat etched in a pattern of Celtic rings. A pair of hand-tooled saddlebags straddling the rear fender shows a relief of interlocking vines and roses. The rivets in the saddle and the bags have the lustre of sterling silver. The mahogany knob on the suicide hand-shifter is burnished with the patina of both wear and care. A classic piece of motorcycle history, not chopped or channelled Easy Rider-style, but customized to preserve the lines of the original design.

“Jesus. This is fantastic,” Colm says. “You did all this work?”

Ted doesn't look up, just shrugs as he feeds his dog. “It's fuck-all.”

“Hardly. This belongs in a museum. An art gallery.” Colm notices a couple of Sturgis Hill Climb posters from the early eighties on the back of a red mechanic's tool box. There's an old movie poster of Marlon Brando from
The Wild One.
Someone has traced a moustache and a soul patch on his face with a grease pencil, and added a cartoon caption, so he seems to be saying: Live Free or Die. “I can imagine Lee Marvin or Brando hopping on this thing and driving away.”

“Hmph,” Ted grunts. “Not Brando, he was on English iron. Triumph
T
-bird. Marvin rode the
HD
. Brando was such a fucking wuss.”

“Do you ride much?” Colm asks. He really wants to ask: Do you know British bikes?

“Nah. Not anymore. My last steady ride was a Sportster. Some people think that's a ladies' bike, but man, that was a fast piece of work. I just built this one for fun.”

“Can I sit on it?”

“Like the man said, knock yourself out.” Colm swings his leg over and eases it off the kickstand. “It's heavy,” he says. “Solid. Wow. Wide.” He pulls the front brake hand lever, slides his foot into the floorboards and toes the clutch, fingers the suicide stick. “It's like driving a car. It's weird having only one handlebar lever.”

“I'll find you a brain bucket, you can take it for a spin.”

“No. I mean I'd love to, but I got my baby in the garage.”

“Baby,” Ted says. “Suit yourself.” The dog licks his fingers, sniffs around his person for more. “That's it. You've had enough, ya little porker.”

“Pardon,” Colm says.

“Talking to the runt here.” He puts the dog down. Immediately it races over to Colm, snorts around his shoes, then starts to bark. It lunges towards Doxie, who stands by the open door. She backs off a couple of steps. Her tail wags, then stops. She sets her head at an angle.

Colm dismounts and looks down at Ted's dog: “It's okay, Doxie won't bite you,” he says to the terrier.

Ted laughs. “Yeah right. You could hit that little furball with a hammer and he wouldn't back down.” The terrier bares its teeth and advances. Doxie retreats across the property line and into her own garage. The dog turns and snaps its jaws at Colm.

Colm hears Zelle now, awake, responding to the barking with cries of her own. “Man, your dog barks all the time,” Colm says.

“Like your kid,” Ted says.

“Pardon?”

Ted shrugs. “My dog barks. Your kid cries. Same difference.”

“Hardly the same, I think,” Colm says.

“Sure it is. Calling for attention. Just different species. It's in their nature.”

“No, it's different. A child isn't some species. She's a person. She cries when she needs something.”

“Whatever, man. All's I'm saying is, doesn't all that whining get under your skin? Does that brat ever shut up?” The dog runs in circles now, barking, barking, barking.

“What did you say?” Colm is at the door, his body angled towards his own place and to the sounds of his daughter, but he hesitates.

“You heard me. Or is that the problem? The rugrat cries and you're deaf to it.”

“I've got to go see my child.”

“Yeah. Go. Put a plug in it while you're at it.”

Colm picks up Zelle from her seat and rocks her against him. Next door the Knucklehead Harley roars to life. The throbbing twin-
V
, barely muffled, echoes through the lane and the windows rattle. Zelle cries even harder, and Colm can hear Doxie join in the barking as he rushes to the house.