A Boy of Good Breeding

twelve

Hosea stood at his window and watched as Knute watered the flowers along Main Street. Red and white petunias, thought Hosea. Yes, that will work. He watched Knute turn around and say hello to a young woman about her age. She was smiling and nodding her head vigorously. Then she pointed to the flowers and laughed. She looks so much like Tom, thought Hosea. She really does. For a second or two Hosea thought about his own child residing within Lorna’s womb and he wondered, would he or she look like him? He watched Knute say good-bye to the other woman and light up a cigarette. She smokes too much, he thought. She’ll end up having a heart attack like Tom. But then Hosea remembered that Tom had never smoked, except for a couple of cigarettes one summer night up on the dike when he was a kid, because Peej had forced him to. Actually Peej had tried to force Hosea to smoke the cigarettes, but Tom had told Peej that Hosea was asthmatic and could die if he inhaled. “Here,” Tom had said, “gimme those damn things, I’ll smoke ’em myself.”

Hosea opened his office window and wedged a fat felt-tipped marker under it to keep it up. He tried to make out the emblem on the front of Knute’s baseball cap. He thought it was the Brooklyn Dodgers. Tom’s cap, he thought. That’s Tom’s old cap.

Peej had always wanted to fight Hosea. He knew he would win and he knew Hosea wouldn’t tell Euphemia, and even if she found out she’d probably just shrug it off or make a joke. And Hosea had no father to defend him.

Hosea remembered watching the baseball game from the relative safety of the dike. He’d known Peej was there waiting for him. Hosea rode his bike around and around the dike. All the boys playing baseball could see him up on the dike and from time to time one of them would wave. Peej wasn’t going to go up there to fight Hosea because he wanted an audience. He wanted Hosea to come down to the field where all the boys were. Finally Tom couldn’t stand it any longer and he threw his baseball glove in the grass and walked over to where Peej stood. “C’mon, you stupid piece of shit, I’ll fight you.”

This made Peej laugh. “Go back to your little game, you jam tart, you’re not the girl I’m looking for.” Tom looked up at the dike. Hosea had stopped riding and stood straddling his bike, watching.

“C’mon,” said Tom, “you big chickenshit. Fight me. If I win, you leave Hosea alone. You never touch him, ever.”

Peej laughed. “Okay,” he said. “And if I win?” Tom flew at him. He didn’t have an answer for that question. He just knew he had to win.

Tom didn’t really know how to fight. He didn’t know how to punch and kick and ward off blows, hook and jab, all that stuff. In fact, he fought like a girl. He clawed P.J.’s face with his fingernails. He pulled P.J.’s hair until his head snapped back and his tongue stuck out and that’s when he bit half of it off and spit it back into P.J.’s face. And that’s when P.J. went down and the fight was over. Tom was sobbing and trembling and he fell to his knees beside P.J. who was bleeding into the dirt and whimpering like a newborn calf. Tom looked up and saw Hosea way off in the distance, riding his bike around the dike, and disappearing. He was free.

Knute was watering the petunias along Main Street, having a cigarette and keeping a lookout for the painters from Whithers. She had hired them to paint the water tower and put the horse decal on it and they had guaranteed the job would be finished by July first, when the Prime Minister might be coming for a visit. They were coming with a few truckloads of paint called eldorado, a kind of filter-orange, Hosea had said, a colour that would blend with the fiery hues of the sunrise and make it look like the white horse was racing through the sky and not plastered onto the side of a water tower. Whatever, she had thought to herself when Hosea told her that. She figured it must have been his girlfriend Lorna’s idea. Anyway, she was watering the flowers when Hosea opened his window and called out, “Hey, Knutie, who was that woman you were just talking to? I haven’t seen her around town before!”

“It’s Iris!” she yelled back. “Iris Cherniski! She’s moved here to help her mom at the Wagon Wheel!” And then Hosea slammed his window shut, just like that — end of conversation.

Hosea put his head on his desk. Well, he thought, she’s here. Those damn Cherniski women don’t waste any time, do they? Now I’ve got Max, the triplets, and Iris Cherniski, that’s five over fifteen hundred. Hosea opened his top drawer and pulled out his orange Hilroy scribbler. Under the column New Citizens of Algren, he added the name Iris Cherniski. He put his scribbler back in the top drawer and closed it. Then he opened the middle drawer and pulled out the tattered copy of the letter from the Prime Minister, promising to visit Canada’s smallest town on July first. It has to be, thought Hosea, it just has to be. He thought of the boxes of empty bottles in his basement and of Euphemia’s dying words, “Your father is John Baert, the Prime Minister.” He didn’t want to think about it. He re-folded the letter and put it back into the middle drawer. Wait a second, he thought. Today’s my birthday! Today’s my friggin’ birthday. He knew he’d have to remind Lorna. She often had trouble remembering her own. God, I’m ancient, he thought. People will think I’m my baby’s grandfather. Hosea flipped his hands over and checked for liver spots and any type of trembling. Had his left hand quivered? He decided to go home and make himself some lunch. He would call Lorna and have a quick nap, and on his way back to the office he would check on the painters and also on the progress of the carpenters who were busy transforming the old feed mill into a theatre. Then he would talk to Knute about Bill Quinn, and also drive out to the Welcome to Algren, Canada’s Smallest Town sign, and think about how to jazz it up.

Hosea drove home and pulled into his driveway. He imagined himself reaching over and unbuckling the seatbelt that would be securely fastened around his infant son or daughter’s car seat. Or, he wondered, does the baby ride in the back seat? From now on, he decided, he would closely observe parents interacting with their children. He made a mental note to remind Lorna to do the same. Hosea had his screen door open and was almost in his house when Jeannie appeared from between their houses. Hosea was afraid she’d bring up the subject of turning the feed mill into an aerobics/laundromat and he was about to tell her he already had plans for it, but he didn’t get the chance. “Oh, Hosea,” said Jeannie, “thank God I caught you, is this a bad time?”

“Uh,” said Hosea, “for what?” He knew for what, and yes, he thought, it was a bad time. Every time was a bad time as far as Jeannie was concerned.

“Well, I’ll just be a second,” she said. “Listen to this. Veronica, you know, Veronica Epp? With all the kids? She’s leaving her husband. Apparently, he’s being a jerk and not helping out with the triplets at all, he says they’re probably not his, excuse me? Not his? I don’t think so. It’s not like Veronica has any time to have affairs on the side. But he says triplets don’t run in his family, and they don’t run in hers, so in whose do they run? Veronica says, Well for Pete’s sake, they don’t really run in most families. So anyway, she’s had enough. She’s leaving. And she’s taking the triplets with her. She was going to take all the kids, but they don’t want to go, you know, they’re older and all that, and Gord’s nice to them because he can see the resemblance, et cetera, et cetera, so—”

“Wait!” said Hosea. “Veronica’s leaving? With the triplets? You mean all three of them?”

“Well, yes, Hosea, all three of them,” she said. “Triplets, three, get it?”

“I can’t believe it,” said Hosea, “that’s fabulous, well not fabulous, I mean, as in good, I mean, you know, fabulous, as in like a fable, it’s so strange, can it be true? That kind of fabulous …” Hosea’s hand flew to his shirt.

Jeannie shook her head. “Well, I don’t know, Gord may be a jerk, but he was probably more help than she realized. It won’t be easy for her to be alone with three babies, not to mention being separated from her other kids, and who knows what strange ideas Gord will put in their heads about their mother and their three baby brothers?”

“So,” said Hosea, “where is she moving to?” A quick horrible thought came to him. Maybe she was moving into the next block, in with her sister who lived in Algren, in which case it would make no difference to the number of citizens, she’d still be in the same town.

“Winnipeg,” said Jeannie. “She’s moving into public housing in Winnipeg and she’s gonna go on welfare until she can get her act together. Right at the beginning she’ll be at her sister’s. They call it a trial separation, you know, they’re not getting a divorce or anything, but as far as I’m concerned, those trial separations never work, that’s it, it’s over, people don’t get back together again, they just call it a trial separation ’cause it’s not so, you know, conclusive, and, of course, for the sake of the kids, who probably don’t want their parents to split up and for her parents, who will probably be devastated, they’re so conventional, and Gord’s parents, who think the sun rises from his you-know-what and—”

“Do you know when they’re leaving?” Hosea asked Jeannie. “Yeah, sometime on the weekend. She’s fed up.” “Oh, you know what?” said Hosea. “I think I hear my phone ringing. I’d better go.” Hosea had heard all that he needed to hear. This was wonderful news. And on his birthday! Four people leaving, that would leave only one person too many for Canada’s smallest town. There was some hope, there was a chance Hosea’s dream might come true. He threw Leander’s hat down on the sofa and rushed to the phone to call Lorna.

“Do you know anything about the Algren cockroach?” Knute asked Tom. No answer. “Do you know anything about petunias?” No answer. “Do you know anything about polite conversation?”

“Plenty,” said Tom. “Too much.”

“Then tell me about the Algren cockroach,” said Knute. No answer. She sat down on the bed next to him. “Did you know that cockroaches are responsible for producing 85 percent of the world’s methane gas?”

“No,” said Tom, sadly, “I didn’t.”

“Well, it’s true, it’s their flatulence that does it. Have you ever delivered a two-headed calf?”

“No.”

“A two-headed horse?”

“No.”

“A two-headed anything?” No answer. She sat and stared at her hands. She yanked a few bits of material dangling from her cutoffs and rolled them into a ball and flicked it to the floor.

“Do you miss being a vet?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Silence for a while. S.F. was playing in her room and Knute could hear her softly singing. She looked at the sky through the window. It would be a very hot day. It was time to leave for work. She got up and Tom said, “I never loved being a vet.”

“No?” said Knute.

“I wanted to take care of people,” said Tom. “I would have liked to have become a doctor.”

“Really? Why didn’t you?”

Tom sighed and smiled at her. “I was afraid I’d make a mistake.” They heard S.F. running down the hall and yelling, “Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here!”

“Well,” said Knute, “S.F. needs a lot of attention and Max has a broken leg …”

Tom smiled. “Think that’ll keep him from running away again?” he asked.

Knute reached around to feel her cigarettes in her back pocket.

“Gotta go,” she said.

“Hey, Knutie,” said Tom, “how’s Hosea doing?”

“Fine, fine,” Knute said. “He’s kind of strange, he’s okay.”

Tom smiled. “Say hi to him, will you?”

Knute nodded. “You were afraid to make a mistake because … why?”

Tom sighed again.

“I know why,” said Knute. “Because you wouldn’t want to be responsible for screwing somebody’s life up, or for cutting it short. You wouldn’t want to kill anybody. Right?”

“Yes,” said Tom, “that’s part of it.”

“But then again, you might have saved somebody’s life. Or made it better.”

Tom was quiet.

“You know,” he said finally, “horses gather in clusters when they know it’s going to rain. Isn’t that smart? So if you want to know when it’s going to rain, go for a drive in the country and look at the horses. They always know.” He closed his eyes and smiled. Knute could hear Dory giving instructions to Max. “… and a chicken casserole in the freezer if you’re interested … and his tablets are on the kitchen table, S.F. likes to bring them to him in an egg cup …”

“Tablets?” said Max.

“Pills,” said S.F. “Tablets are pills.”

“Okay,” said Max, “fine. Do you know how many he gets and how many times, all that?”

“She knows,” said Dory. “If he doesn’t wake up or respond when she goes in, she just leaves them on the bedside table. He takes them eventually. Or so we think, anyway … is that a skirt you’re wearing?”

Knute looked at Tom. Did he listen to their conversations all day? Did he care? His eyes were closed and his feet stuck out from beneath his blanket. They were big, strong-looking feet with blue veins all over them and they looked ridiculous poking out from under the soft, yellow cover.

“Yeah, it’s a skirt,” Knute heard Max say. “I’m not going to cut my jeans to get them over this stupid cast, and I refuse, on principle, to wear sweat pants or baggy shorts, so for now I’m wearing dresses. They’re cooler.” Knute heard Dory and S.F. begin to laugh and she left Tom to join them. Sure enough, Max had a skirt on and a wide leather belt. The skirt was a green suede mini with pockets that had outer stitching on them. He had one big black boot on, with a hockey sock, a baseball cap on backwards that said And? on the front of it, and no shirt. She noticed a few scratches on his shoulder that she had probably given him. His cast was covered with S.F.’s drawings of hearts and flowers and crooked houses with smoke coming out of their chimneys. She had painted the toenails poking out of the cast a light pink. “It’s one of my mom’s,” he explained to us. “It was too big, of course, so I just cinched it here with this tool belt, like this, and … what do you think?” S.F. nodded her head and said, “It’s cute,” and Dory said, “Nice legs.”