Things as They Are (22 page)

And now his nerve was gone. Without it he was nothing, less than nothing. When the nerve went, jail was just around
the corner. Jail was not his cup of tea, to tell the truth it scared the holy shit out of him. Of course, the ignorant general public would never understand the difference between him and your usual run-of-the-mill criminal who lacked Reg’s sensitivity.

He’d been in twice. The first time he’d got one year less a day. The second time he was sentenced to thirty months. He had barely survived the longer sentence with his sanity intact. The problem with the pen was the kind of people you found there, very low-rent, very crude individuals. Nobody was noisier than a criminal, always shouting threats, slamming cell doors, screaming in their nightmares, playing their radios full throttle, showing absolutely no consideration for their neighbours, none. Reg hated noise. It interfered with his reading magazines and books from the prison library.

And they were violent. If there was anything Reg hated more than noise it was violence; he lacked a drop of violent blood in his veins. Regardless of any other complaints they might have had about him, several of the women he had lived with in the past had commented on this remarkable aspect of his character – no matter how mad he got he never hit them. A gentleman at all times.

Really, he could hardly be considered a
criminal
. Not if the word meant anything. Who had he ever really hurt? Okay, he had received money from people who should have known better. But in what way was that different from what so-called honest, respectable businessmen, so-called pillars of the community, were doing every day of their lives? And what did it amount to, the money he had taken? Peanuts. A thousand dollars from this one for aluminum siding, a thousand dollars from that one for a burial plot, a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there. Nobody could tell him that they hadn’t been able to spare it either. What a bunch of crap.
If they hadn’t been able to afford it, they wouldn’t have parted with it!

It was the unfairness of it all that got him down. He had met a guy in the Prince Albert Pen who had murdered three people,
two of them children. With an axe. And he was never sick a day in his life, ate like a horse, slept like a baby. But Reg Stamp, who had never done anything much worse than a sort of practical joke, a complicated prank,
he
couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t find a second’s peace.

He would be fifty-three years old in six months. If he continued on this way he might never see another birthday, the stress and strain of this life was going to kill him. Other men in precarious health could fall back on disability pay, draw on company pension schemes. Not him. Other men could look forward to a secure retirement. Not him.

There was nobody to take care of Reg Stamp but Reg Stamp himself. In his current dilemma, he couldn’t see any way out except to marry her. At least it was legal and most likely a shorter sentence than he’d get if he were convicted again. How long was an old lady like that likely to last, abusing herself with alcohol the way she did? To put it in perspective, all you had to tell yourself was that it was like waiting for a Canada Savings Bond to come due. While he waited he could relax, take life easy, rebuild his health. If he made like he’d given up a promising career as a bank inspector to manage her affairs she’d be delighted, eternally grateful. She’d probably even buy him a classy present.

And the beauty was it was all legal, no financial hanky-panky involved. Good fortune made him feel generous, magnanimous. He expected to give something in return, that was his style. He knew what these old ladies like Cora wanted – a little care and kindness. So what if she went fishing for a compliment once in a while, he’d give her one. It was no skin off his ass. So what if she wanted to sit and drink Glendronach in the afternoon, he wasn’t averse. So what if she wanted to have a little dance now and then, he didn’t mind dancing. After all, keeping her happy today would ensure his happiness tomorrow.

They were married ten days later, a whirlwind romance. Reg argued for a private wedding, by which he meant secret. “Let’s surprise our friends,” he urged, overlooking that he had none. Reg didn’t want someone meddling and queering the deal at the last minute. The ceremony was performed by a marriage commissioner, the witnesses were the caretaker of Cora’s building and his wife. Reg gave them twenty bucks a piece.

There was some confusion in the beginning because the marriage commissioner kept trying to pair Cora and the caretaker together, assuming, because of their ages, they were bride and groom. When it finally got sorted out, with much shuffling and shifting and switching of places, Reg was pretty peeved because he had been made to feel ridiculous. Also, the commissioner giving him the hairy eyeball all through the service didn’t do anything for Reg’s increasing bad humour either. And Cora insisting on playing the blushing bride and carrying an enormous bouquet bristling with baby’s breath just topped it all off. Every time Reg looked over at her he asked himself, “Who does she think she is? Doris Day?”

But he pecked the bride and it was mercifully finished with, the happy couple returning to the apartment to order Chinese food and drink the two bottles of champagne that had been left chilling in the fridge. Cora giggled a lot over her new name, Mrs. Cora Stamp, slamming her foot to the floor every time she said it. She hadn’t had much time to get accustomed to it because she had learned it only after Reg had proposed and security restrictions were lifted because he was quitting his job. Reg bridled inwardly whenever she laughed because he didn’t see anything funny about his name. Of course, when Cora got drunk she could find paint on the wall hilarious.

After they polished off the two bottles of champagne they uncorked a bottle of Glendronach from the case she kept stashed in the linen closet. An hour or two later, Reg, seeing that Cora was getting into pretty bad shape, suggested she go lie down for a while. Cora, who thought she knew what he was hinting at, got unsteadily to her feet, went into the
bedroom, put on her filmy fuchsia negligee, freshened up her lipstick, and lay down on the bed to wait for her new husband to come to her.

Reg sat in the living room with a glass in his hand, a man of property. He looked around him. That bottle of whisky was his whisky. That chair was his chair. That stereo was his stereo. Once these things had been Len’s but by the simple act of obtaining a marriage licence they had become his. Which only went to show you that in the end he had a step up on old Len, was miles ahead of that supposed financial wizard. To keep these nice things, all he had to do was be kind to an old lady, carry her grocery bags for her, help her into taxis, put her to bed when she was too drunk to do it herself.

Finding this very funny he laughed, poured himself another drink, stretched out on the sofa. He didn’t know where he was going to sleep tonight but
pas de problem
. In the course of such an eventful day there had been no time for a discussion of domestic arrangements and for one night he had no objection to roughing it on a soft sofa. He’d slept worse places in his day. Tomorrow he’d have her buy a water bed for him; he’d always wanted one of those, but his former life had made one impractical. You couldn’t skip about the country the way he had with a water bed.

And he needed a new suit. He had the feeling that part of the marriage commissioner’s evident contempt for him was the way he was dressed, in a Bay Day suit. Reg continued to count off items on a lengthening shopping list as if they were sheep until, all at once, he was asleep.

Mrs. Cora Stamp lay in bed awaiting the groom for a long time. He did not make an appearance. Several times she called out in an enticing voice, “Mr. Growl Bear? Mr. Growl Bear?” but got no answer.

Reconnoitring, she found him asleep on the chesterfield. The dear boy really was handsome, handsome in a more refined way than Len had been. She gazed at him fondly. What a picture of innocence! Leaning over, she kissed his brow and quite by accident one of her breasts grazed his cheek, provoking him to stir. She continued.

Reg Stamp woke in confusion from a dark dream of treachery and deceit, shouting: “Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!” in a terrified, accusing voice. He had no idea who he was indicting. Whether it was Reg Stamp, or the blurred, wet red lips he felt dabbing at his neck and face, it all came to the same thing. All he knew was that life, the old whore, had tricked and cheated him once again.

IT WAS EARLY MORNING
, so early that Gil MacLean loaded the colt into the truck box under a sky still scattered with faint stars. The old man circled the truck once, checking the tailgate, the tires, and the knot in the halter shank, tottering around on legs stiff as stilts, shoulders hunched to keep the chill off him. He was sixty-nine and mostly cold these days.

A hundred yards behind him one window burned yellow in the dark house. That was his son Ronald, asleep under the bare light bulb and the airplanes. Whenever Ronald fled Darlene, the woman Gil MacLean referred to as the “back-pages wife,” he slunk back to his father’s house in the dead of night to sleep in a room lit up like a Christmas tree. To her father-in-law, Darlene was the back-pages wife because Ronald had found her advertising herself in the classified section of a farm newspaper, right alongside sale notices for second-hand grain augers and doubtful chain-saws.

Dawn found the old man in a temper, a mood. It was the mare he had wanted when he rattled oats in the pail and whistled, but it was the gelding which had been lured. The mare, wiser and warier, had hung back. So this morning he had a green, rough-broke colt to ride. There was nothing for it, though. He needed a horse because his mind was made up to repair Ronald’s fences. They were a disgrace.

Generally that was the way to catch what you wanted,
shake a little bait. It was what Darlene had done with Ronald, but she hadn’t fooled Gil MacLean for a second. He knew how it was.

Four years ago his son and Darlene married after exchanging honeyed letters for six months. Ronald never breathed a word to him about any wedding. When Ronald’s mother was alive she used to say Ronald was too much under his father’s thumb. But the one time he slipped out from beneath it, look at the result.