The Fire-Dwellers (7 page)

Anyway, Stacey, I don’t aim to get taken by some bone-head mechanic’s mistake, not if I can help it – I mean, not even something I did, or another driver.

What do you mean – another driver?

When I say another driver, I mean another
driver
, see? Not some jerk of a farmer or tourist. I don’t include Mac in that. He drives a car, sure, but he’s as near to a driver as you could get.

  — Maybe Buckle has a recurring nightmare about being smashed by a Volkswagen. Fate worse than death. Well, so what? All he wants is a jury of his peers.

How do you keep your luck? Praying?

You kidding? None of that crap for me. Reilly keeps a St. Christopher medal strung up there in front so he can see it all the time. Lots of guys do. Everything from kewpie dolls to saints. I know a guy keeps his wife’s picture up there, framed with doodads and plastic flowers. All a lot of bullshit. I’m not superstitious.

Yeh, so you’ve said.

  — His shrines are invisible. I wonder what they look like, and what fetishes and offerings lurk on those altars? Yeh, doll, that evening course Man and His Gods. Great authority, you. What do you know of it? Don’t be silly. Don’t think of it. It always seems unbelievable that I met Mac through Buckle, in a way.

Whatsamatter, Stacey?

Oh – nothing. Want another drink?

Twist my arm.

  — Julie left him four years later, when their boy was two. The last couple of years we saw very little of them. When she left, she never said why, not to me, anyway. She just lit out. Buckle blamed it all on her, how she complained about his long-distance driving and that, and wanted him to change, and he wasn’t having any of that crap, et cetera. Only a long time later I began to hear in his talk just how often he claimed somebody was trying to force him somewhere he didn’t want to be. I never knew how it was, for her.

How’s your mother, Buckle?

Buckle’s face takes on further concealment. He has lived with his mother in an apartment over a store on Grenoble Street ever since Julie left him. He has never asked Mac and Stacey there, so they have never seen the old lady.

Oh great. Always great, she is. She’s only got one tune.

What tune is that?

Be careful on them dangerous roads
, she keeps telling me. She couldn’t care less about me, you understand. She just wonders what’d become of her if I went. I don’t blame her.

  — Maybe he can’t stand anyone to go to his place because she probably calls him Arbuckle, which is his name and which he hates even more than Mac hates his name, Clifford.

Click, Slam. Mac at last. Stacey now realizes that she has not gone upstairs to fix her hair or put on a decent dress.

Hi, Stacey.

Hi. Everything okay?

Mm. Everything’s fine. You?

Fine. Buckle’s here.

That’s good.

  — The automatic kiss bit. Does he actually not see me when he kisses me like that, or is it really the opposite – out of the corner of his day-beleaguered eyes he sees his life’s partner, slacks and scruffy blouse, sagging in all directions and doing damn-all about it, and he shuts off the sight like you shut off the street noises because if you didn’t, one day you might run amok and that wouldn’t do?

Mac picks up Jen.

Hi, princess.

Jen laughs straight from her belly, the deep delighted laughter of a child loved.

  — He’s crazy about her. If ever I suggest maybe I should take her to the doctor and see about why she doesn’t talk, he nearly has a fit.
Don’t be ridiculous
, he says. It’s because he can’t bear to think anything might be wrong with her. Not with Jen.

Katie refuses to come down for dinner, and Mac inquires what the hell could possibly upset the kid like that. Stacey refuses to answer. Buckle goes into his steering story again. He is interrupted by Ian and Duncan, who argue over the relative size of each other’s dessert, both claiming that the other has the larger portion, until Stacey suggests that they trade, which both refuse to do.

  — Spoiled brats. What have I done to them? Fighting over a square inch of frozen artificial cream. Not dying of hunger. Not even aware of the possibility. Squabbling over nil. Who made them so? What will happen when the horsemen of the Apocalypse ride through this town? Oh Stacey, enough.

Mac finally cannot bear the uproar.

Shut up, for God’s sake, can’t you? Stacey, can’t you keep these kids quiet for one minute? Here, you two – neither of you will get any ice cream, if that’s the way you’re going to carry on. Just you leave the table right now. You don’t know how damn lucky you are. When I was a kid, ice cream was a treat.

  — I was thinking the exact same. Yet when it’s spoken, it doesn’t sound convincing. It sounds corny.

Mac – leave them. Please. They’ll simmer down. C’mon, kids.

  — My placating voice. Running interference again, never knowing if rightly or wrongly, or whose side I’m on or why I should be on anybody’s side. Am I undermining Mac? “Are You Emasculating Your Husband?” I swear those articles are written by male anarchists, delighting in the tapeworms of doubt which they sound out to squirm through my guts. How do I know if I’m emasculating him or not? Every time I disagree with him I feel I’m knocking him down. So I agree with him profusely and then it’s me who’s doing the disappearing act. Now he’s on the point of real anger. Action, quick.

Ian! Duncan! You heard what your dad said. Eat your ice cream right now and then leave the table and no more horsing around, eh?

This is not what Mac has said, but maybe he will let it pass. Stacey’s voice sounds to her own ears like some harpy of the mountains, the cold shrill of the north wind. And yet,
after dinner, Ian approaches Mac with no apparent qualms and it works.

Hey, Dad, you wanna see something?

What?

My bug. I got it finished today.

Yeh? How’d it turn out?

Not bad. You should see the steering – it’s really neat, how I got it rigged up. C’mon – it’s in the back yard.

Okay. Want to come, Buckle? Big deal, here.

Sure, okay. I’ll come along. You know what you’re gonna be, Ian? A long-distance driver like me. You got the feel for a vehicle, eh?

Naw, I’m gonna be an inventor.

Great, boy. You can support me in my old age. The hell with driving, like your Uncle Buckle and I do. You invent a new-type rocket, see?

  — It’s good when it’s like that. Why can’t it be all the time? Ian needs it so much. He doesn’t give a damn for my approval. He knows he’s got it anyway. It’s Mac’s he needs. And yet they turn around and knife each other with words, both suspicious. I should be able to prevent it, but I don’t know how.

The gin has completely worn off now. Stacey clears the table and perceives that Duncan is standing by himself near the kitchen door. She puts an arm around him, asking him to help with the dishes because he is so talented in this way, and he consents to the deception for the sake of belonging somewhere. Stacey takes a bowl of stew and one of ice cream upstairs and leaves them outside Katie’s door where Katie’s dignity may permit her to claim them in due course. Then Stacey bathes Jen, puts her to bed, calls the boys, gets them stowed away after a one-hour exchange of repartee, and finally changes her own clothes, from slacks to bronze linen sheath with ersatz gold pendant.

  — Pour on the Chanel Number Five. Drench yourself in it, woman. Go On. Mac and Buckle will spring to their feet.
Gad!
they will exclaim.
Who is this apparition of delight? Who is this refugee queen from The Perfumed Garden?
In a pig’s eye, they will.

Mac and Buckle are not in the dining room or the kitchen or the living room. They are down in the basement, in the darkened TV room. Buckle is lighting two cigarettes, holding them both in his mouth at once. He hands one to Mac, who takes it without a word.

  — I’d like to knock that damn cigarette to the floor and stamp on it hard. Yeh, that would be splendid. Mac would have me certified.

Stacey says nothing. She sits down and lights a cigarette for herself, crossing her legs so that her ankles, still slender, show. Or would have done if the room had been lighted and anyone had been looking.

  — The Ever-Open Eye. Western serial. Sing yippee for the days of the mad frontier. Boys were sure men in those days all right and men were sure giants. How could they miss? Not with them dandy six shooters.
Tak! Tak! Splat!
Instant power. Who needs women?

The program ends, and then the News. This time the bodies that fall stay fallen.
Flicker-flicker-flicker
. From one dimension to another. Stacey does not know whether Ian and Duncan, when they look, know the difference.

  — Everything is happening on TV. Everything is equally unreal. Except that it isn’t. Do the kids know? How to tell them? I can’t. Maybe they know more than I do. Or maybe they know nothing. I can’t know.

It’s depressing.

Don’t look then, honey. Want a beer, Buckle?

Don’t mind if I do. They oughta drop an H-bomb on them bastards.

You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

What d’you mean, Stacey? It would settle them. It would settle a lot of things.

Yeh, so would slitting your own throat.

Stacey, would you kindly go and get a couple of beers for Buckle and me, if it’s not asking too much?

I was only

I cannot stand these pointless arguments over nothing.

Nothing!

There isn’t any use in talking. It doesn’t change anything.

  — True. And he really can’t stand it when I argue with Buckle. God, Mac’s terrible need for quiet, and my denial of it.

I’m sorry. I’ll get the beer.

  — Anyway, I probably exaggerate. Do I?
Doom everywhere
is the message I get. A person ought not to be affected, maybe. I’ve got an accumulation of years, and a fat lot of good it does me. I wish I could chuck it all away.

  — Around that time I used to figure out how we would get away if need be. We would all pile into the old Chev and rocket on up to the great north woods. Ignoring traffic jams, that is. I used to visualize us taking some little-known road which we would cleverly discover on the spur of the moment. Armed with radish seeds, we would conquer that muskeg, the rock and the green-black silences of the timber-lands. We would hack out our village, grub up slugs for the soup pot, spear deer, and teach the kids all we remembered of Shakespeare. Only one or two snags. Neither Mac nor I could have mustered more than about two lines of Shakespeare, and neither of us would last more than twenty-four hours in the great north woods. Also, who would the kids marry? Incest was out. So I gave up on that one. It wasn’t such a hot sedative.

Here’s your beer.

Oh, thanks, honey. Listen, Buckle, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go up and do some work. Got to finish a report on sales. Seeing Thor tomorrow. You’d hardly believe it, but that guy keeps all the sales figures for each area in his head. Not just city, either – all over the province. See you around, boy, eh?

Sure. So long.

Buckle and Stacey remain looking at the screen. Buckle, who normally drinks a bottle of beer in four gulps, now sits holding it without drinking.

Guess Mac thinks this Thorlakson guy is okay, eh, Stacey?

Yeh. I guess so.

Sounds like quite a guy.

Yeh.

I noticed his picture in the paper few days ago. You see it? In connection with some kinda rally he’s putting on. Pretty well-educated guy, would you say, Stacey?

  — I never before in my life felt sorry for Buckle Fennick and I don’t want to now. It disorients me.

I don’t know. Yeh, I guess Thor is pretty well educated.

Funny name – Thor. Sounds made up.

Icelandic, I guess. Used to be lots of Icelanders in the prairies, around Gimli.

  — I wonder if I ever saw Thor in Winnipeg or somewhere? Imagine Buckle feeling like that. I think I’m badly off with Grade Eleven. I bet he’s got about Grade Five.

After Buckle has gone, and even Katie is now reluctantly in bed, Mac emerges from the study, which is his retreat, the place where he can shut himself away, amid his business files and racing car magazines and
Playboy
, away from the yammering of his wife and young.

Thought you’d gone to bed, Stacey.

Sorry. I didn’t know you wanted the house to yourself.