The Equations of Love (10 page)

Eddie found his own suitcase and picked it up and stumbled along in the lighted dark in the rear of the smartly stepping crowd off the boat who so soon vanished out of his sight intent on their own business, weighed down, too, with hand baggage or packs. He knew that he was rather but not quite tight, and this decided him not to go to Mount Pleasant and stay with his friends Mr. and Mrs. Ole Almquist to whom he was always welcome when sober, but to go along Powell Street to the Regal Rooms where he often stayed and where he knew
a guy who knew a guy who could get him some bottles of good rye any time he wanted.

Eddie reached the Regal Rooms all right, and met there a couple of friends, and after they had slapped each other largely upon the shoulders they went on to make a night of it, and so it was that in the early morning they all helped each other to bed, aided by the proprietor, and they all slept in their clothes.

Eddie’s friends Mr. and Mrs. Almquist, who had been notified by Eddie of his probable arrival, looked at each other at about eleven o’clock, and Mrs. Almquist said to her husband, “Well, Ole, I guess Eddie’s done it again,” and they waited no longer, but turned out the lights and went to bed. Mrs. Almquist lay awake for a while, regretting that such a nice fellow as Eddie should be so dumb, and then she went to sleep.

It was in the early afternoon of Wednesday that Eddie woke up and thought he’d better get up and put on his good blue suit and go out somewhere. He didn’t feel so good and thought that perhaps Herman might not be feeling so good either, and first of all he’d better go and find Hermy and what about a little drink. So he took a bottle and went to find Hermy’s room which was on another floor, and when he got there he found that Hermy had got up and gone out. He felt affronted and deceived by this action of Hermy’s and so he had a little drink. He then remembered his blue suit and started back to his room. But because of his condition, he did not go back to his own room, all the rooms being very much alike, but went into another room, had another drink, lay down on the bed and went to sleep again.

When he woke up late in the afternoon he pulled himself together once more and thought again of his bright
blue suit. He got up and went again to his suitcase, but the suitcase was not there. Who had taken his suitcase? Eddie became very angry. It was a shame that a guy could not leave his room for two minutes without having his suitcase stolen off of him. As he stood looking down at where his suitcase was not, the thought came spinning into his head, righted itself, and straightened itself up and stated that perhaps he had never brought his suitcase to the Regal Rooms at all, but had left it on the dock. So he started down the stairs which heaved up and down at him and at last he reached the door. All this time he was talking to himself or somebody.

When poor Eddie (who three days ago was so fine and strong and knowledgeable and sober, shinning skilfully up the great firs and monumental cedars on the sloping shores of Knight Inlet) began to progress along Powell Street towards the docks, he found the going hard. He addressed the passers-by, but they, silent as fishes, swam noiselessly past and vanished. He spoke to them loudly, greeting them, telling them what he thought of them for passing him silently like fishes, and telling them that he had lost his suitcase. They did not care and continued to swim past him past him swimming past him. He beckoned and waved to them but they, suddenly multiplying to three or four apiece and then vanishing, neither saw nor heard him. They saw and heard him all right, but found it more convenient to appear blind and deaf to Eddie Hansen. As Eddie weaved along he discovered that one side of the pavement of Powell Street was no good. That was, really, the kerb side. The other side was good and there was something hard which responded to you by holding you up. That was a house or a shop. So tall Eddie travelled along, leaning against this something solid from time to time, and it was as he took his ease against The Fishermen’s Book Shop and
harangued the shadows that slid by him without caring that he had lost his suitcase, that he saw as in a wavering cloud the good face of his friend Mort Johnson.

Eddie lunged out awkwardly and seized Mort strongly by some part of him and a great gladness filled him, and before he told Mort about going down to the dock to find his suitcase, he pumped Mort’s arm up and down and told him again and again how fine it was to see him; and Morty was just as glad to see old Eddie, his big friend the high rigger, Paul Bunyan of Jervis Inlet, good old Eddie, drunk or sober.

J
ust before the moment when Eddie Hansen, looking with glazed eyes at the passers-by, suddenly saw looming up the pleasant sight of the face of his friend Mort Johnson, Vicky Tritt, on the other side of Powell Street, minced along on her way to her Wednesday evening service at St. James Church, wishing that she had not put on her good hat with a veil, as the rain had now begun to drizzle. The hat with a veil did not suit her as well as her everyday hat – no hat could be said to suit her – but the good hat was part of her going to church. Because Mrs. Ravoli had borrowed her umbrella, she had no umbrella with her. As Eddie leaned against the Fishermen’s Book Shop, and Victoria May, mincing along on the opposite side of Powell Street, saw across the road a huge drunken logger leaning against the Book Shop and addressing the passers-by, they both converged upon a moment in the life of Morty Johnson whom Vicky then saw swaggering genially down Powell Street in the direction of this drunken man whom Morty had not yet seen. Victoria May slowed up and looked across at Morty walking with his easy swagger and roll, seeming very much pleased with things, and she thought Oh,
Morty does look nice! and Morty was indeed a contrast, one might think, to the fair drunken giant who leaned against the shop making large gestures to no one in particular. Vicky slowed up, watching her cousin by marriage Mort Johnson walking cheerfully along, looking full of contented thoughts, which he was. So Vicky saw Mort sober approaching Eddie drunk and did not suspect a connection between the two. Then she saw Mort sober stop dead in his tracks and hail the drunken giant, and the drunken giant almost fell upon Mort, and the two of them swayed about in a kind of ecstasy of greeting that looked Vicky thought, for all the world as though they were wrastling. She wondered if this friend of Mort’s could be that Eddie Hansen of whom she had heard Myrtle speak so unfavourably. She then saw a kind of argument develop in which both men talked at the same time and each seemed to pull the other in opposite directions. Mort seemed to try to urge Eddie back along Powell Street in the direction – but Vicky could not know this – of the Regal Rooms. But Eddie was stronger and, being drunk, was impervious to argument, and so he prevailed over Mort who seemed to give up arguing, and Vicky saw the two men, Mort sober supporting Eddie drunk, continue an uncertain course down Powell Street. Naturally she did not know that they were going down to the dock in order to satisfy Eddie about his suitcase, but that was where they were going. Then she could no longer distinguish, across the misty drizzly street, the figures of Mort and his friend among the other people, so she went on her way, hurrying a little, to St. James Church.

St. James Church is a noble grey building, non-Gothic, perhaps neo-Byzantine, which stands staunchly on the corner of East Cordova Street and of Gore Avenue which runs down to the near waterfront. Although not lofty, the church rises
above the surrounding shabby wooden buildings of the East End, and, higher still, holds up against the sky an aery cross. The parish, whose name the church bears, once extended all the way up the coast and back into the hinterland. Now the church serves, in the East End, many people from all parts of the city of Vancouver. The church is flanked by two ancillary buildings of faintly Tudor dignity, which are not incongruous, but are complementary to the sturdy architecture of the church itself. Kitty-corner from the church is the Police Station through which are sieved many of the major and minor crimes of the city, and where dramas – ultimate, penultimate and ante-penultimate – fuse, coalesce, absorb, resolve or do not resolve, and disappear, giving place to others. The Police Station exhales a breath peculiar to itself. The church building dominates the Police Station building, and the aery cross rises above all; but the cross is not seen as often as you would think by people who continually pass by, and who look about or within themselves thinking of other matters. Church and Police Station face each other obliquely, and serve the people of the city.

Vicky hurried up the steps of the church, and, avoiding the welcome of a sidesman but accepting the hymn book and prayer book which he held out to her, she took her seat in the very back pew against the wall. She dropped upon her knees. This performance was physical, not mental although perhaps spiritual (who could divine?), and, having conformed, she looked before her with satisfaction at the focus of the grey church, at the altar.

The church, although barren of ornament, is not barren of beauty. It is cool, with a lovely austerity. There are six tall shining candlesticks at the altar. The candles are lighted. Seven small shining lamps hang suspended, their length of suspension
forming pleasing curves which the eye follows gratefully and again follows. The shining lamps and their small ruby-shaded flames canalize the thought, the prayer, the dream. Then there is the large suspended crucifix, again aery; two plain pulpits; nothing more. The music accords with this, in pure and sweet enunciation. The services are ceremonial and also informal; man speaks to man; man listens; God speaks to man through man in easy words that Vicky can understand, although she does not always listen; but she dreams, her eyes following the line of the suspended ruby flames of the seven shining lamps – up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Vicky does not know what all the short ceremonial of the service signifies, but it satisfies her, and she is aware, quite humbly, that it signifies something, or Father Whitehead would not perform it.

On the evening when Vicky took her place, anonymous, almost invisible, in the very back pew against the wall, Father Cooper came down from the pulpit and stood amongst the people and talked to them. “Blessed,” he said, “are the meek,” and then he went on to talk about the real meaning of rare meekness, and why his Lord had said “Blessed are the meek.” Vicky liked to see Father Cooper standing kindly there among all sorts of people, talking to them; but she had such a poor opinion of meekness (so near it was to herself) that she did not listen to Father Cooper’s words, and her thoughts strayed to Mort Johnson who had gone off with Eddie Hansen (she supposed). She was a little afraid that Mort might get into some sort of trouble with Eddie who was acting pretty wild and was a big powerful man and drunk, and then oh poor Myrtle, wouldn’t she be upset at Morty; because Myrtle was so proud.

Benediction and the last hymn ended the short service. Vicky knew the hymn and joined in the singing with her voice of a small twittering bird, with the thin twittering voice of a
chickadee, perhaps, that whispers and whispers in the trees. Her thoughts left Myrtle and Mort and Eddie Hansen and came back to Father Cooper who stood now at the door of the church and shook hands with his people. Vicky liked Father Cooper to shake hands with her; nothing was demanded of her in return for this handshake. Her seclusion was warmed by it and not violated. She went out into the dark lighted street where wet pavements shone. The rain had for a moment ceased. I will get back home before the rain begins again, she thought, thinking of her veil, and she hurried along, her head poking forward, as if she had an immediate appointment.

A block or two along Cordova Street she saw, under the street lamp, a group of men standing, talking. Others joined this group. Men questioned each other. What is it? Vicky prepares to go around and so avoid the group. All the people are serious. What has happened? Something has happened. As Vicky skirts the group of people talking under the street lamp she hears a man say “Not Mort Johnson!”

Another man turns to him and says “Yes, the name was Mort Johnson.”

Vicky stands still and listens to the men talking and questioning together. She then learns that Mort Johnson is dead.

I
n what good humour Morty made his way out to Burnaby to the nurseries to see if old Cameron had a job for him. This was the kind of job that he liked, something reg’lar but not too reg’lar. The one catch, he knew as he bounced along in the interurban railway, was that some years ago he had worked at these nurseries and had been fired by old Cameron for being lazy, negligent and incompetent; not grave faults perhaps, but faults which enrage a competent and industrious employer. Still and all, Morty questioned whether old Cameron would really remember him, as old Cameron had hardly seen Morty and had dealt with him through intermediaries. So all of this did not trouble Morty very much as he bounced along through the outskirts of the sprawling city of Vancouver and looked out of the car windows at the soft grey day, day soft and damp and enervating, air opaque and lethargic, holding promise of rain. The handsome mountains which line the northern sky of Vancouver receive the impact of bodies of air travelling across from the Pacific Ocean, down from the Queen Charlotte Islands, down from the Aleutians, and these bodies of air, striking the handsome mountains,
grow heavy, and sullen with increase; they break, and the rain falls and falls, and newcomers from the bright prairies wonder if they won’t go back home if there’s one more day of this rain, but oldtimers of Vancouver, though a little weary of the rain, know always that when a glorious day breaks on the green ground and on the mountains, this rain will be forgotten in the brilliant air. Mort was nearly an oldtimer, and the rain coming soon didn’t bother him, and the thought of old Cameron didn’t bother him much, but the need of a job and some money in his pocket bothered him a little. He rather hoped to see out there a friend of Mrs. Emblem’s, by name Mr. Mottle, before he ever came up against old Cameron, because Mr. Mottle knew Mort under the most favourable of circumstances and would certainly put in a word for him with old Cameron. Mr. Mottle was very respectable and was a sort of caretaker out at the nurseries.