A Boy of Good Breeding

two

When Knute and Summer Feelin’ drove up to the house they could see Tom and Dory standing in the living room, staring out the picture window. Next to them were small bronze statues and clay busts that Tom had bought, and he and Dory seemed to blend in with these things. As soon as they saw Knute’s beater pull up in the driveway, though, they came to life. Dory zipped to the front door and Tom smiled and waved. These days he stayed away from the doors when they were being opened. He couldn’t afford to get a chill and get sick all over again. S.F. ran up to the picture window, flapping like crazy, and Tom gave her a high-five against the glass, smudging it up a bit. Dory came running out of the house saying, “Welcome, welcome, oh I’m sooooo glad you’re both here.” And she scooped up S.F. even though her heart wasn’t in much better shape than Tom’s and then, with her other free arm, wrapped herself around Knute. Tom beamed through the glass.

Dory had prepared a large meal. It consisted of boneless chicken breasts with a black bean sauce, steamed broccoli, slices of cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots, brown rice, and a fruit salad. Knute could just barely pick out the grimace on Tom’s face when he sat down at the table, rather ashamed and annoyed that all this dull stuff constituted a celebratory meal. And that it was all made especially for him and his fragile heart. He would have preferred a big piece of red meat with lots of salt, some potatoes and thick gravy, cheese sauce to accompany his steamed broccoli, great slabs of bread with real butter to soak up the gravy and juice from the meat, a large wedge of apple pie and ice cream, and four cups of coffee to wash it down.

But, of course, Tom couldn’t eat steak every day, or maybe he could have and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Who knows? Anyway, Knute could tell that Dory felt very good about herself when she prepared the chicken and steamed vegetables, and the fact that they had hardly any taste made S.F., at least, happy.

After lunch Tom did a bit of walking up and down the hall, S.F. went down to the basement to play with the toys, and Dory and Knute had a cryptic conversation about Tom.

“So?” said Knute, and jerked her head in the direction of Tom and the hallway.

“Well,” said Dory, “you know …”

“Mmmmm …”

And then Dory said, “One day at a time …” and Knute nodded and said, “Yup …”

They sat there and stared at their coffee cups for a bit and Dory added in a very hushed tone, “A bit more,” she tapped at her chest, “these days.”

Knute tapped her own chest. “Pain?” she asked.

Dory nodded and pursed her lips.

“Hmmm … well, what does the doctor say?”

“OH TOM, YOU’RE DONE?” Tom had finished his walk and Dory had been timing him. He had walked for eight minutes. Dory was trying to be extremely upbeat about the eight minutes. “Well, Tom, yesterday it was only seven,” and that sort of thing. Tom went over to the picture window and stood with his back to Dory and Knute. He punched his fist into his palm once and then after about thirty seconds he did it again. He slowly walked back to the couch and lay down with a heavy sigh.

After supper (of leftovers), Dory and Knute played Scrabble. For weeks Dory had been playing with “Marie,” a phantom Scrabble opponent whom she had given her own middle name to. Knute asked Dory how she felt when “Marie” won, and she said, “Divided.” Summer Feelin’ had wandered over to the neighbours’ house to play with the little girl, Madison, who lived there. Dory could never remember Madison’s name. “Montana?” she’d say. “Manhattan?” Which got them onto the subject of names, and Dory wondered if Knute had, perhaps, considered calling S.F. just “Summer” instead of “Summer Feelin’”? Knute knew Dory wasn’t altogether enthusiastic about her granddaughter’s name and she told her she’d think about it, although she wondered if Dory was really any authority on girls’ names considering the choice she’d made when her own daughter was born.

“Summer,” Dory said over and over. “If you say it enough times, you know, Knutie, you get that summer feeling. You don’t have to actually say it. The Feelin’ part becomes rather redundant, don’t you think? Or maybe you could change the spelling of Feelin’ to something, oh, I don’t know, Irish, maybe, like Phaelan, or …”

Just then the doorbell rang. Tom woke up from his nap on the couch and Dory answered the door. A large man with a pale yellow golf cap tugged twice at the front of his coat before greeting Dory and stepping inside.

Tom was the first to speak. “Hosea Funk, c’mon in, c’mon in.” And he nodded his head once, in the traditional male greeting, got up from the couch, and stood there in his polo pajamas looking a bit like William Shatner in the Enterprise and smoothed down his hair, which had become mussed from lying down. Dory said she’d make a fresh pot of coffee and told Hosea to have a seat.

“Hose, do you remember our Knutie?” Dory asked him, putting her arm around Knute’s shoulder and grinning. Hosea’s thumb and index finger went for the front of his shirt, but then, through some act of will on his part, he adjusted his golf hat instead and replied, “Why sure, Dory, I remember Knutie.” Everybody smiled and nodded and finally Hosea broke the awkward silence. “So, are you here for a visit, Knutie, or …”

Knute was just about to answer when Dory said, “No, she and Summer Feelin’ have moved back, for the time being.”

“Oh, well,” said Hosea, “that’s great! Welcome back to Algren.”

“Tha—” Knute was cut off by Hosea, who had suddenly sprung to life. “You still barrel-racin’, Knute?”

Barrel-racing! thought Knute. The one time she had barrel-raced, badly, was in a 4-H rodeo and Hosea Funk had happened to be her timer. That was years ago, before he became the mayor. Back then he got involved in every event in town. If there was a parade, Hosea walked along throwing out candy to the kids. If there was a flood, Hosea organized a sandbag crew. If the hockey team made it to the playoffs in the city, Hosea offered to drive. Once, at a fall supper in a church basement, he was given a trophy by the main street businesses and it said, Hosea Funk, Algren’s Number One Booster.

“Nah, I’ve given it up,” said Knute. And she kind of buckled her knees to look bowlegged and horsey. Hosea Funk nodded and Knute could tell he was thinking of something else to say. She waited. A few seconds more. There. This time he couldn’t help it. His fingers went to his shirt and tugged, not twice but three times. He was ready to speak.

“But that palomino could turn on a dime, couldn’t he? He was something else. Now whose was he? Art Lemke, that’s right, he was Art’s. Wasn’t he, Tom? You know the one I’m talking about? The palomino?”

“Yup, yup, I think you’re right, Hose. Wait a minute, no, yeah, he would have had to have been Art’s. Well … hang on, I’m trying to remember. Nope, he would have been Lenny’s. Remember, Hose? Art sold the palomino to Lenny after his accident and Lenny couldn’t keep the palomino from jumping the fence and hightailing it back to Art’s barn. If I remember correctly … it’s hard to say. I don’t recall how it all turned out exactly, but I do know that horse loved Art all right. Never really took to Lenny …”

Hosea leaned back in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, his palms pushed against each other as if in prayer, his fingertips against puckered lips. He and Tom pondered the palomino while Dory and Knute slipped away into the kitchen to make the coffee.

Hosea and Tom were friends, in a way. Not like in the old days, when they were boys, but in the kind of way that you are in a small town with another man your age who has never done anything, really, to make you hate him or love him. They might as well be friendly, although Hosea visited Tom’s house more often than Tom visited his. And, since his heart attack, Tom didn’t go anywhere except to his doctor’s appointments and those visits exhausted him.

Tom had been a veterinarian and knew about animals and that might have been one of the reasons Hosea brought up the subject of the palomino. Hosea might have felt inferior to Tom, being a professional, having a wife and a daughter and even a granddaughter, but Tom didn’t think enough about Hosea to feel much of anything towards him other than a simple affection and a certain type of sympathy and from time to time, especially these days, a pang of nostalgia when he remembered himself and Hosea as boys. During all those years while Tom was busy working as a vet and living with Dory and Knute, and while Hosea was living with his mother and looking after just about everything in Algren, their paths had kind of veered away from each other.

Of course, now, with Tom’s heart attack, the balance might have shifted. Tom was feeling fragile, while Hosea was still running around town taking care of business. Knute thought Tom was kind of uncomfortable with Hosea showing up like that, unannounced. He probably would have liked to have changed out of his polo pajamas at least and maybe shaved. But Hosea always just showed up. Making his rounds, enjoying a cup of coffee, passing the time. He liked to know what was going on in his town. People were used to Hosea dropping by for a visit.

“So, Hose, what are you up to these days?” asked Tom. Knute could hear him from the kitchen.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve got a lot on the go right now. I’ve, uh … well, you could say I’m working on a major project, Tom.”

“Good for you, good for you,” said Tom, and Knute imagined him grimacing, wishing he had a major project besides staying alive, and Hosea tugging, wishing he had something more to say and quickly, too, like a great conversationalist, a real charismatic public figure.

Tom had begun to say something else, though. “Are you ready to divulge the nature of your major project, Hose, or—” But just then, Summer Feelin’ came barrelling in through the front door, made a beeline for Tom’s lap, leapt, and landed square on her target, knocking off Tom’s glasses. Tom let out a big “oooph” and Dory came running from the kitchen thinking it was another heart attack, and Hosea stood there all nervous, tugging, tugging, tugging, until everyone realized what had happened and they began to laugh and S.F. tried on Tom’s glasses and coffee was served and the conversation turned to gossip and did you know that so-and-so was let go at the bank, after thirty years? No one’s saying why, and did you know that Sheila Whatsername has left her husband and is seeing a therapist in the city, but she looks great, she really does. And Hosea’s major project was forgotten.

At the end of the visit, they all stood clustered around the door for what seemed like hours. This was what Tom and Dory always did with their guests. Knute wondered why Dory didn’t serve another couple rounds of coffee or why they didn’t just sit down there on the floor in the front entrance area. Coats would be done up, then undone slightly, undone completely, sweat would form on the upper lip, the coats would be taken off and slung over their arms, then a hand on the doorknob, the coats would be on again, all the way, then undone an inch, mittens would be slapped together purposefully, then removed, bodies would stand erect, close to the door, then one leg would buckle and they would slouch against the wall. Well, the visitor would say like he or she meant it this time, “I’m outta here,” and then, “Oh! Did I tell you …?”

Summer Feelin’ fell asleep in the hallway on the floor between Dory’s legs.

“Excuse me,” said Knute, “I’m gonna take her to her bed.”

And with that, the three of them, Tom, Dory, and Hosea, began to flutter, and Hosea said, “Okay, yes, the poor kid, here I am keeping her up, keeping you all up, really, I should go.” This time Tom and Dory didn’t say, “Oh, Hosea, there’s no hurry.” Tom reached for the door and opened it, not caring at this point whether he got a chill and risked his life.

But just before Tom could close the door gently on him, Hosea turned around and said, “Say, Knutie, if you need any part-time work while you’re in town, let me know, I may be able to set you up with something.” And then he was gone. Tom and Dory went running for Tom’s evening medication, and Knute watched through the large picture window in the living room as Hosea walked away, into the night, through the few empty streets of his town, Canada’s smallest.

The baby. Naturally Euphemia had a plan. She had had nine months to figure out elaborate plots, twists and turns, casts of characters, acts of God, all to explain the sudden arrival of this baby. In the end, however, she didn’t use any of her fancy stories to explain the baby. Her family had always shrugged off any changes in their lives. If there was no explanation offered they couldn’t be bothered to hunt it down or make one up. Of course, the mysterious arrival of a baby in the household was not a small deal. But Euphemia decided to take a chance. A chance on simplicity. Instead of coming up with a thousand details, which could be forgotten or repeated in the wrong order and arouse suspicion, she decided to give her family only one.

The beauty of it, too, was that it wasn’t even really a lie.

“I went out late in the evening to use the outhouse and a mysterious man on a horse gave me his baby. All he said was ‘Thank-you.’ Then he was gone.”

Well, that was more or less the situation that had occurred nine months earlier at the harvest dance at the Algren Community Dance Hall.

Euphemia hadn’t planned to abandon herself to lust that evening. And it wasn’t really lust she had abandoned herself to, anyway, but curiosity and maybe a bit of hope that the mysterious stranger might be her ticket off the farm. It was with the same shrug that her family used in almost all situations calling for decision that she allowed herself to be taken by the hand to the edge of the canola field behind the dance hall.

Euphemia was the last, well, maybe not the very last, girl in the area anyone would have called immoral. She did her chores, obeyed her parents, had lots of friends, and was pretty, a good runner, and playful. She won spelling bees and quilting bees, and had never even had a boyfriend in her life. In the forties girls like Euphemia Funk did not allow themselves to be led by the hand to dark fields behind dance halls.

She had stepped outside to use the outhouse. The little building was a ways from the dance hall, down a dirt path, towards the canola field. The stranger had been leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, and before she could even get to the outhouse, he had wandered over to her and put out his hand. She knew he had been at the dance. She and her friends had seen him and wondered who he was. Probably a relative of someone around there or a farm hand. He had nice eyes and a beautifully shaped back, they thought. “It tapers, it really does,” said Euphemia’s friend Lou. And he obviously bought his shoes in the city. No, he couldn’t have been a farm hand. Not with shoes like that. Euphemia had seen him talking to Leander Hamm, so maybe he was a horse breeder or a horse buyer or maybe he owned racehorses in America. But he looked so young, just a few years older than she was. Euphemia liked the way his thighs filled out the tops of his pants and the way his legs were shaped, vaguely, like parentheses. There was a bit of a curl to his hair at the bottom and it was longer than the hair of any of the boys from around there. Euphemia liked those curls, at the bottom, the ones that rested against his neck.

She just hadn’t said no. Nobody had come along to discover them. The night was very dark and warm. The stranger was handsome and sure of himself. Euphemia couldn’t think of any reason not to take his hand. She had tried to come up with a reason, but couldn’t. Afterwards, he retied the bow in Euphemia’s hair and wiped the grass and leaves off of her skirt. It had hurt, but she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t made a sound. And neither had he. She had kept one hand cupped firmly around the curls on his neck and her other hand beside her, on the ground. Afterwards they sat together, and Euphemia said, “well,” and turned and smiled at him. And the stranger smiled back and squeezed her hand and said, “Thank-you.” Then he walked over to where his horse was tied up, just on the other side of the dance hall, and rode away.

Euphemia hadn’t told a soul about what happened. She hadn’t felt a second of guilt. She was thrilled with herself.

“He said ‘Thank-you,’ and that’s all, that was it?” asked Euphemia’s mother, as she and Euphemia and Euphemia’s brothers and sisters peered down at the baby, now resting in the Funks’ old cradle.

“Yes, and then he rode away on his horse.” Euphemia couldn’t stop herself from smiling, but as she did so she widened her eyes for effect.

“Hmmmm, very odd. What a peculiar man. The boy is barely a day old, Phemie, are you sure he didn’t say who he was or why he was giving you this child?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Euphemia had successfully been delivered of the baby’s placenta and had taken it and the clothes that had blood on them and buried them behind the machine shed. With trembling fingers she had tied a knot in the baby’s umbilical cord and wrapped him in one of the sweaters she had been wearing just before he was born. The baby hadn’t cried, not really. He had made a few creaking sounds, but nothing that could be called a real wail. By the light of the barn lantern, Euphemia saw the baby open one eye. The other wouldn’t open for a few hours. The fingers on his hands moved almost constantly and his head, too, swivelled from left to right, back and forth, towards the lantern’s light and away again.

Euphemia put her face to his. She breathed on him and felt his tiny puff of breath in return. She put her index finger against his lips and he tried for a moment to get it into his mouth. She moved her lips and her cheek against his damp head and prayed to God to keep him from all harm. Still, she was not afraid. She would protect him. At the time Euphemia hadn’t noticed the baby’s black hair curl on his neck and hadn’t thought for a second about the stranger, the baby’s father, at the dance hall. For the second time in a year she was thrilled with herself.

Euphemia knew that she could not breastfeed the baby. She would have to find a way to wrap her breasts and get rid of her milk. The postpartum bleeding could be explained as normal menstrual blood, if it was explained at all. Bleeding, women’s bleeding, was another thing the Funk family shrugged off as one of those things, which it was.

For now she would wrap her breasts in strips of gunny sack and cotton and pray to God they wouldn’t start to leak as she sat at the supper table with her family. She would, inconspicuously, drink a lot of black currant tea and if the pressure grew too great, she would squeeze the milk out herself in the john. Maybe she could even save some of it and mix it in with the formula when nobody was looking. Over time she would squeeze out less and less milk as though she were weaning a baby. Euphemia hoped her breasts could be fooled. When Flora Marsden’s baby was born dead, she had drunk huge amounts of black currant tea to stem the flow of her milk. Euphemia remembered her mother talking about it to a friend of hers. Her mother and her mother’s friend had been outraged that a neighbour of Flora’s had suggested she hire herself out as a wet nurse to mothers too busy farming to feed their babies. “I know I was never too busy to feed my own baby, that’s for sure,” Euphemia’s mother had said in a rather convoluted, self-serving indictment of Flora’s neighbour.

“Well, he’ll need a name, won’t he, Phemie?” asked Minty. The sun was coming up now. Euphemia’s mother went to the china cabinet and came back to the cradle with the black Bible. She yanked a bobby pin from her hair and stuck it into the shiny pages of the big book. It opened at Hosea. “There,” she shrugged, “Welcome to the world, Hosea.” And she stuck the bobby pin back into her hair.

Hosea Funk lay in his bed in his house on First Street, watching the sun come up over Algren. Thank God that health food store hadn’t worked out, he thought. If the couple running it hadn’t packed up their rice cakes and moved back to Vancouver Island last week, the recent arrival of Knute and her daughter would have put Algren’s population at fifteen hundred and two, and that would have been two too many. Hosea closed his eyes and thought about his letter, the one from the Prime Minister. Well, okay, it wasn’t a personal letter, it was a form letter, but Hosea’s name was on it, and so was a photocopied signature of the Prime Minister’s name, John Baert.

The Prime Minister had promised to visit Canada’s smallest town on July first, and Algren, the letter had noted, was one of the preliminary qualifiers in the contest. Everybody in Algren knew it had been short-listed, why wouldn’t it be? After all, check out the sign on the edge of town. Even the Winnipeg daily paper had mentioned, in one line, on a back page, that Algren had been picked as a nominee for the Prime Minister’s visit. But the people in Algren went about their business with very little thought of July first, other than looking forward to the holiday from work, and the rides and the fireworks. If Algren had the smallest population at the time of the count, great. If not, who really cared? After all, they thought, the Prime Minister had made promises before. Of course, they knew Hosea Funk was extremely proud of Algren’s smallest-town status, he was proud of everything about Algren. Good for him, they thought, usually with a smile or a raised eyebrow. Might as well be. But nobody in Algren knew what Hosea knew, or what he thought he knew, or just how determined he was to be the winner.

Hosea wanted to relax, to savour the early morning calm, to stretch out in bed, enjoy his nakedness, and happily welcome the new day. A small part of him wished his mornings resembled those in the orange juice commercials where healthy clean families bustle around making lunches and checking busy schedules, kissing and hugging and wishing each other well. But he was alone. And he hated orange juice. It stung his throat.

So Hosea lay quietly in his huge bed. For the last year or so he had been working on his panic attacks. Mornings were the worst time for them. And for heart attacks. His buddy Tom had had his in the morning just about an hour after waking up. Hosea suspected, however, that his determination to stay calm was a bit like overeating to stay thin and so he tried not to think about it too much. Instead he tried to relax his entire body starting from his toes and working his way to the top of his head. The alarm on his clock radio came on, as usual, ten minutes after he woke. It was set to a country station, and Emmylou Harris was wailing away, Heaven only knows just why lovin’ you would make me cry, and Hosea thought, Ah Emmylou Harris, a voice as pure as the driven snow, a real class act, all that hair and those cowboy boots with the hand-painted roses …

Hosea lay naked in his bed and whispered Emmylou, Emmylou a few times and closed his eyes and mumbled along with her, Heaven only ever sees why love’s made a fool of me, I guess that’s how it’s meant to be … He thought of Lorna and the last time they’d made love and then tallied up the days, and the weeks. Almost two months.

He tried to leap out of bed, just as his own personal joke, but ended up getting tangled in the sheet, knocking the radio off the bedside table, and yanking the cord out of the outlet, so that Emmylou Harris was cut off and fifty-two-year-old Hosea Funk, mayor of Algren, was left alone again and aching.

But not for long because by now the sun was up and he had work to do. Fifteen minutes on his exercise bike, a piece of whole wheat toast with honey, black coffee, half a grapefruit, a freshly ironed shirt, and a shave, and Hosea was out the door of his modest bungalow and driving down First Street in his Chevy Impala, humming the Emmylou tune on his way to the Charlie Orson Memorial Hospital.

The town of Algren had four long streets running north-south, one of them being Main Street, and ten short avenues running perpendicular to the streets. It was possible to walk anywhere in town in less than fifteen minutes, but Hosea almost always drove.

Driving down First Street towards Hospital Avenue, Hosea continued to think about Lorna. She had been his girlfriend for about three and a half years. About the same length of time it had been since Euphemia Funk had died. They had met at an auctioneers’ convention in Denver. Auctioneering had been another thing Hosea was involved in, following Euphemia’s death, but had since abandoned. For a guy who had trouble finding the right words to say hello, auctioneering wasn’t the best hobby. Lorna had been wearing a name tag that had said, “Hi, my name’s …” then nothing — she hadn’t filled it in and Hosea was smitten by her for this reason. He looked at everybody else’s properly filled-out name tags and thought how ridiculous they all were. And his, too, Hosea Funk, how absurd. Who was this mysterious Mona Lisa with the blank name tag, anyway?

Throughout the convention, Hosea stumbled about hoping to catch a glimpse of her, tugging fiendishly at his shirts and not giving a hoot about cattle calls or estate auctioneering protocol. He had been forty-nine at the time, but he felt like a sixteen-year-old-kid, creating impossible scenarios in his mind whereby he could prove himself worthy of this mysterious woman with the blank name tag.

On the plane home from the convention he had all but given up, when, to his amazement, he saw her stroll down the aisle towards him. She had stuck out her perfect hand and introduced herself. Lorna Garden. It turned out she lived in Winnipeg, was divorced with no children, worked as a medical secretary, and dabbled in auctioneering. The name-tag thing had been an oversight on her part. But Hosea was in love and Lorna thought he wasn’t too bad and the rest is history.

“And my relationship with her may be history, too,” thought Hosea, “if I don’t get my act together.”

Hosea couldn’t make up his mind, it seemed. Did he want her to move out to Algren and live with him or not? He knew Lorna wanted to, but now, with Hosea’s hemming and hawing, Lorna was starting to play it cool. “Whatever,” she’d said the last time they’d talked about it. Hosea hated that word. Whatever. All through his childhood on the Funk farm and then in town living with his mother he had heard it being used, oh, almost daily. Whatever, Euphemia would say if Hosea asked if he could have ten cents. Whatever, she’d say if he told her the U.S. had invaded Korea.

It wasn’t a question of damaging his public reputation, having Lorna live with him. The townspeople of Algren would have been happy for Hosea to have a woman living with him. And it wasn’t a question of room or money. Hosea had enough of both. And it certainly wasn’t a question of wavering commitment. He loved Lorna with all his heart. It was just … well, would she have been one person too many for Algren? For Algren’s status as Canada’s smallest town.

And soon Lorna might just give up on him, thought Hosea as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. But what could he do?

Hosea focused on the task at hand. He had a question to ask Veronica Epp — just one and he’d leave her alone. Veronica Epp was expecting her fifth child. This fact alone irked Hosea. But now there was some talk around town that she was expecting twins. If she had two babies instead of one, which he had figured on, Hosea would have to do some fancy footwork.

“Good morning, Jean Bonsoir,” said Hosea, with one slight tug at his front, to the hospital’s only doctor, an import from Quebec. His name was Jean François, but Hosea like to think his alternative pronunciation was funny and helped to break the ice.

“Hosea,” the doctor returned with a nod. He was counting the days until he could leave Algren for Montreal, where he could do something other than minor surgery and routine obstetrics and where people would pronounce his name correctly. It still peeved him to think of Hosea Funk calling his girlfriend, Genvieve, who remained in Montreal, Jenny Quelque Chose.

“Uh, listen, Doctor, I need to talk to Mrs. Epp for a minute, tops. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Fair enough?”

Jean François had understood the Mrs. Epp part and shrugged Hosea down the hall. “Room four, Hosea, but be quick because she needs to rest.”

“Will do,” said Hosea, already moving towards Veronica’s room.

He had begun to walk into her room as if he was entering his own kitchen but stopped abruptly. Veronica Epp was lying with her back towards him and, unfortunately for Hosea, her blue hospital gown had come untied, exposing her buttocks and lower back. Before turning away, Hosea thought to himself how a woman could look, well, like normal, from the back, even while she was ballooning out in the front, and he wondered if he himself looked thinner from behind. It was something to consider. But now, he grabbed at his shirt and took three steps backwards, returning to the hallway and standing on the other side of the doorway.

This was the type of situation that completely unnerved Hosea. Was Veronica sleeping? Should he wake her up? How? Just then he heard a godawful moan coming from across the hall. A tiny tuft of white hair and an atrophied face poked out from beneath a blue sheet. The body attached to it looked like that of an eight-year-old girl. Hosea looked closer. Oh my God, he thought, it’s Leander Hamm, Lawrence’s dad. Nobody had told him old Mr. Hamm was in the hospital, and, from the sounds of it, he wasn’t long for this world. Well, thought Hosea, it could be a good thing. Not that he invited death upon his townspeople regularly, but, after all, Leander Hamm would have had to have been almost ninety-five, and that’s a good long life. If he were to buy the farm sometime soon, then Veronica Epp’s alleged twins might not be as big a problem. Though it didn’t bode well for having Lorna move in with him.

Which reminded him. He cleared his throat and stretched out his arm to knock on Veronica’s door, keeping the rest of his body safely behind the wall. He had to find out from Veronica what the story was and he didn’t want the doctor coming around and wondering what his problem was.

“Come in?” Veronica called out to the empty doorway. Hosea had quickly pulled back his arm after the knock and was still standing behind the wall next to her door.

“Uh, Mrs. Epp, it’s, uh … Hosea Funk.”

Dead silence then except for the swishing of stiff sheets.

“Oh, Mr. Funk? Well, come in.”

Hosea had thought that Veronica Epp would have recognized the name right off the bat. He was the mayor, after all, but then again, she had just woken up and was in a somewhat groggy condition. He wouldn’t let it bother him. And besides, as he stood there, far from her actual bed, a look of recognition came over her face and she smiled warmly.

She rolled over, on her back now, and Hosea was truly alarmed at how enormous her belly was. Darnit, he thought. That’s gotta be twins.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Epp?” Hosea planted his gaze on her face to avoid having to look at her stomach.

“Fine, thanks. The doctor just thought it would be a good idea to come in a bit before I go into labour, because I’m a high risk.”

“I see,” said Hosea. “Well, that’s good.”

Veronica Epp looked slightly puzzled.

“I mean it’s good that you’re here, being observed like this. It’s a very good thing.” Hosea coughed twice but resisted the urge to tug.

“Yes, Dr. Jean is very attentive, very good. And, love ’em dearly though I do, it’s rather a nice break from my other kids, you know.”

No, Hosea did not know. And what was this business with calling Dr. François Dr. Jean? That was rather personal, wasn’t it? He knew he would have balked to be called Mayor Hosea instead of Mayor Funk, but then again that wasn’t usually a problem in Algren as most people just called him Hosea or Hose. The few times someone like Tom had called him Mayor Funk he had detected just the slightest hint of sarcasm. But, of course, that might have been because Tom was his friend and why would friends be formal? But still.

“Hmmm …” Hosea nodded, trying to smile. He stepped towards Veronica and put his hand briefly on top of the mysterious machine making beeping noises and showing various squiggly lines on its screen.

“Handy contraption, this, eh?” Hosea stared at the lines in deep concentration as if he knew what they meant. What he was trying to do was figure out how he could best ask the question without appearing to be prying, that is, inappropriately curious about what was so obviously none of his business.

Veronica strained to turn her enormous body towards the machine to get a better look. The sight of her shifting startled Hosea and he stared, wide-eyed, hoping her gown would not slip off and expose her privates.

Hosea was beginning to feel very warm. Veronica looked uncomfortable. She grimaced slightly, then scratched her stomach. As she did so her gown shifted over a bit, and what was revealed to Hosea was just about the most gruesome thing he had ever seen. He thought he would be sick. What was it, he wondered, a scar? A birth defect? A smallish, round, bluish disk of smooth skin with what looked like lips in the centre of it stretched across the middle of her stomach. It wasn’t a tiny head pushing through, was it? Hosea knew it couldn’t be. He knew, of course, that babies did not just poke through the abdominal skin of their mothers for a look around or a bit of air. However, it looked like it would burst any second and Hosea did not want to be around when it did.

“Ha, would you look at that?” Veronica laughed. “Wouldn’t know it was a belly button, would you?”

A belly button! thought Hosea. Of course! And suddenly Hosea felt very lonely. Something so simple, so tender and common as a belly button and he had not been able to identify it. He had been scared of Veronica Epp’s belly button. He was fifty-two years old. He should know about these simple things by now. Old Leander Hamm, all shrivelled up and dying, he had a belly button, too. And Lorna Garden and Tom and Dory and Jean François. For some reason the thought made him sad, momentarily. He had to get on with the job here. He would have to get directly to the question, just simply ask it of Veronica and hope she wouldn’t think it was strange.

“So you’re high risk, are you? Why exactly is that?” There it was. He had popped the question. Hosea braced himself, waiting for the worst.

“Well, they think it’s triplets.” Veronica Epp now beamed up at Hosea. For her it was like winning the lottery. Hosea’s gaze moved down to her mountain of a stomach and then out the window towards the tiny trickle that was Algren’s Main Street. Lawrence Hamm’s dad moaned from across the hall. Hosea felt like he had just been kicked in the groin.

“You mean three?” he whispered.