Nights Below Station Street (19 page)

Another person who used to come to the house and see her mother was Belinda. Belinda and her little girl Maggie. Rita would wait for them to come, and always have tea ready for her.

“How are you today, Belinda,” she Would say. “How’s Maggie doing?”

Belinda didn’t like people too much, was suspicious of young girls, and frightened of her old boyfriend, Vye, and often ended the conversation by saying that some day she would get the police because of the noise at night. Then pushing Maggie’s cap onto her head, and heading down over the hill with old kitchen drapes that Rita had given her for her apartment scraping the snow, or some silverware that Rita gave her in the pockets of her coat, she would disappear around Lutes’ house, and Adele would shout:

“Is she gone yet?”

“Yes,” Milly, who was lookout on the upstairs steps, would answer.

“Well, blessings come at the strangest times,” Adele would say, and coming out the door in her housecoat she would strut into the bathroom before anyone else could see her.

Adele did not like to be seen when Belinda came around. But once she got caught standing in the kitchen.

“Hello,” Adele said, abruptly walking past her, her face as stern as ever, and her hair bouncing up and down on her head.

Belinda looked at her and nodded. Belinda always dressed her daughter as best she could. Maggie’s ears were pierced, and her chubby neck was adorned by a silver necklace. Every day there would be a new outfit.

Adele didn’t like the little girl either. But Adele didn’t like any of these kids her mother kept three days a week. “I can’t do nothing,” she would screech, and then shove one of the culprits on his arse. “I’m trying to study for my project (it was always a project when she wanted to emphasize the importance of her school work) but I’ll flunk for
sure with all these screamin-meemies all over the place.”

Rita would go about picking up kids and toys, with her blouse half undone, and her hair hanging limply in a ponytail. Whenever her mother tried to explain something to her, Adele would yawn, and look about as if she were thinking of something else entirely.

Adele used to like to wear leotards about the house. But now she had suddenly become very modest.

Milly would come from the bathroom with her pants down, yelling: “I gotta find some kleenest – ta wipe my bum,” and walk past the kitchen table to the cupboard. Rita would walk about with the zipper broken on her pants and a safety pin through it, so when she moved a certain way and leaned against the counter to light a cigarette in the middle of the afternoon, you could see her yellow panties. But Adele, who used to walk about in her tight leotards had now turned modest. At any word or any saying that was sexual or even slightly off-colour, she would now give a start, grow rigid, and look severe.

This was around the time Adele began going to church every morning. Waking up in the cold room, with her new picture of Pete Mahovlich over her bed, she would dress in the cold. It was a cold that made the dust seem heavy, and the house filled with sleep. She could hear Milly snoring in the little bedroom down the hall. At the very end of the hall there was a flush, which they called the bathroom though the main bathroom was downstairs off the kitchen. She would sit down and have a pee, and yawn and blink, and listen to how loudly Milly snored. Then she would think of the cartoons she’d seen, where the roof lifted when the
family snored, and this thought for some reason would displease her.

Then she would go out the front door. The trees would sit heavy in the dark. There was still a doorway light on at Myhrra’s trailer. And she would walk in the cold darkness up her street to the highway. Here the wind would hit her – she would count her steps along the sidewalk that was just a single pathway.

The huge church was almost empty. Father Dolan, or Father Garret would say mass, the altar boy would glumly do his duty – candles would flicker in the early morning light. Adele would step up to the altar nervously to receive communion.

“The body of Christ,” the priest would say.

“Amen – amen,” Adele would whisper, staring wide-eyed at this moment, and looking quickly at the marble crucifix. Then she would turn and walk away, her skirt hanging below her knees, walking on her run-down heels.

Ralphie went to sleep on the chesterfield with a grey blanket over him and his boots still on. Snow blew against the window, and he could smell snow and wood in the alley below. The grey blanket was one which had caught on fire so it had a large hole in it. He slept with his shirt and sweater on – that is, he went to bed with them on but at times he would wake up during the middle of the night and strip some of these things off, throwing them into the corner. He was generally unconscious of doing this, and would wake up in the morning and go about searching for things he had thrown away during the night.

In the mornings the wind rattled the far window where he had stuffed a piece of plastic, and he would wake to the neighbours’ footsteps on the landing. Sometimes a thought would come to him and he would get up, and still half asleep would feel about the floor until he found a screw or a bolt, and without even putting his shirt on, though the room was freezing, and walking about on his haunches, he would begin to fix an appliance for someone, with new resolve.

Ralphie would never sleep in a bed if he could help it.
The whole idea of sleeping in a bed was distasteful to him even though he never thought of it very much. At the height of his popularity with his apartment, others used his bed frequently. There was always a smell of humans all over his bed. So he put a crank case on it, and left it at that.

One day Thelma came down to visit the apartment. Sobey’s was right next door, and she had been grocery shopping. She came in when Ralphie wasn’t there. He was out skating, so she sat on a chair and talked to Ivan Basterache. Ivan told her about all of the times “Judge” Pillar had put him in jail. Ivan kept saying that he deserved all of this, and he was sorry “the judge died.” When Thelma took out a cigarette, he leaned forward and asked her for one, and cleared his throat. Then he went about looking for a warm beer he’d left overnight somewhere in the apartment.

“I always liked the judge,” he said, with that tone of voice one reserves for those everyone else has a grudge against. “Ya, the judge never did me any favours, but he never harmed me too much.”

He called Mr. Pillar “the judge” as if everyone did – and the longer Thelma sat there, the more Ivan felt he could take licence in what he said. He knew very well what he was saying, though he pretended to be naive. He berated Ralphie for his messy apartment and kept saying Ralphie would have to shape up in that department. Ivan told her all about his life, and about his little brother who’d been crushed by a steamroller, and his mother who lived next door to all of her children – with Clay Everette Madgill – and how they’d meet her on the sidewalk and she wouldn’t speak to them. Though she wouldn’t speak to him, and he and his sisters fended for themselves, he adored his mother. The whole idea that a mother could do no wrong – and if she wore her fox fur coat, while he scrounged about for an egg, so much the better – was a matter not to be argued
about. Even though she used to bang his head against the cement wall if she caught him skipping church. “She couldn’t learn me nothin,” he said, and smiled at his own stupidity.

He told Thelma more about the town in an hour than she had ever known, always with himself as one of the major characters – and always how he was “just about killed” or was “almost caught in a big jackpot” or “nearly had my head blown off on that one there.” Then he would look at her and try to think of what else he could say to amuse her, and show himself in the best possible light, with “Dangerous” tattooed on his left wrist and “
F.U.C.K.”
tattooed on his knuckles.

Because she was Ralphie’s mother, he wanted to tell Thelma about his own mother. Since she was rich, he wanted to tell her about how Gloria was rich too – and would not have a thing to do with her children – which seemed to Ivan to be a great plus for her. With his straight black hair and narrow eyes that wandered as he spoke, he looked Chinese. He also had a continual self-deprecating grin. Because he was Ralphie’s friend Ivan wanted to tell her how Ralphie would not be able to do without him, and he wanted to berate Ralphie just enough so she would realize how well her son was understood.

There was the whole idea of taking Ralphie under his wing and showing him the ropes – teaching him how to catch fish and to poach, and to jack deer, and shoot moose. So off they would go into the woods, and Ivan, with a huge double-barrelled shotgun, and two ammunition belts about his chest, would start shooting as soon as they got up on the dirt roads. He would shoot at squirrels and broken bottles and truck tires. He would shoot at anything he could think of: “Either animal or mineral, animate or inanimate.”

He had a fine intelligence in a five-foot-six body. Knowing Ralphie did not know the woods, or anything about the woods, but wanted to, Ivan would tell him all he could about himself, and the deeds he had done. Then he would blast off a few more rounds straight into the air as he stood there, amongst the trees that were dying and cold, in his little boots and red peaked cap.

One evening just at dusk the September before, Ivan and Ralphie were hunting moose. Ivan didn’t have a moose licence but he neglected to tell Ralphie this. They had gone out to a camp on the river the day before; a small cold place that Ivan was ordered out of the spring before. They were both drinking rum, and Ralphie was sitting back smiling at everything Ivan said – and the more he smiled the more Ivan told him about all the plans he had.

Then they went out and called a moose. They walked straight into a bog, up to their knees in mud, and every now and then, seemingly without rhyme or reason, Ivan would grunt. It was hard to walk, they were cold, it had begun to rain, and, in fact, Ralphie was sure they were both lost.

Then they heard a noise behind them. Ralphie moved around and saw from his left, out in the dark of the trees, a huge form coming toward them. He did not know he was looking at the huge back and shoulders of a bull moose. He had never seen one before.

“Ivan,” he said, “what’s that?”

“What’s what?” Ivan said, shivering, with rain dripping off the brim of his hat, and his little eyes puffy in their sockets.

“Over there – look!”

“Holy – oh fuck, Ralphie – that’s a moose.”

And with that he started to run down through the trees. “Run, Ralphie, run for fuck sake,” he yelled.

Then he began shooting over his shoulder. He slid and fell down, and seemed to disappear in the gloom. Ralphie did not move. He could not. He never saw the entire moose. He saw its huge rack, and then a gigantic flinching shoulder. The moose turned, snorted, and moved toward him. Though the bog was filled with trees, they were all cedar with their branches fifteen to twenty feet off the ground.

“Climb a tree!” Ivan roared.

“I can’t find any,” Ralphie said, looking about.

Then suddenly, as if possessed – and as if all of his life he had been slightly possessed in order to protect himself – Ivan stumbled up the bank, screaming, with the double-barrelled shotgun blasting.

“Hold er now – you’ll shoot me!” Ralphie screamed.

But Ivan didn’t hear him. The great bull staggered, slumped to one side, got up again, and moved forward Then, its front legs gone, and a blow of blood coming from its nose, the moose came down with a crash four feet from Ralphie.

“Is it dead?” Ivan called back.

“I don’t know,” Ralphie said.

“Well, throw something at it,” he said. Ralphie looked over at Ivan. Ivan could still remember his face had two streaks of blood on the cheeks.

Because Thelma was educated, he wanted to tell her about how he ruined his life “in that there” by beating up a variety of teachers, and carrying jack-knives. Then he asked her for another cigarette and contemplated all of what he had said. What he was hoping for was what he always received from people – that they would say they knew he was really good at heart, but he might have gotten off on a wrong foot This wrong foot business was what he’d always received and he hoped to receive it again.