Cadillac Cathedral (14 page)

He’d been no more than thirty at the time. He’d sat two rows behind her at the service, and had chosen to sit against the centre aisle so that he could speak to her as she left. But the Hungarian had taken her hand as they filed out, and Myrtle had walked with her gaze on the carpet just ahead of her narrow high-heeled shoes. Arvo had spoken her name, but he must have said it too softly — or maybe she’d chosen not to acknowledge it. At any rate, he’d had enough time to see that she had become, as a woman, as pretty as he’d once imagined. He’d had to sit down again and pretend to be praying for a moment, in order to catch his breath, while others in his row turned to leave from the other end of the pew.

But he had gone to the reception anyway, and had waited for the opportunity to approach her while she was sitting beside her husband with a paper plate of cakes and cookies in front of her. Seeing him heading her way, she’d said his name as a question. Squinting — uncertain — but apparently ready to be pleased. When he’d nodded, she stood up to greet him. “Arvo Saarikoski.”

“It is.”

“You never returned a pen I lent you once.”

The accusation was such a surprise he laughed. At the same time, he recognized that it was meant to be a friendly comment, and maybe not even true.

She laughed as well, and put a hand on his arm. “It was probably one of those old clear plastic things that leak all over your hand. Bound to be dried up by now. Let me introduce my husband.”

Her husband had not been much interested in meeting Arvo. Perhaps he didn’t care that — as she explained to him now — Arvo had saved her life by helping her with her science experiments. The two men shook hands. The Hungarian also did not look interested in having a conversation with the man who had, besides helping with science experiments, sung duets with her at school concerts and
turned the pages at her piano recitals. Still, when she gestured to an empty chair across the table, Arvo sat — despite the man’s unfriendly scowl.

“And so,” she said, “did you become the doctor you said you wanted to be? An eye doctor, I think you had in mind.”

“I said that?”

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. Apparently she thought he was only pretending to forget. And had herself forgotten that they had been at the vocational school at the same time — though, in his case, for only a short while.

“An eye doctor?” he said. “I’m sorry you weren’t around to remind me when it could have made a difference.” He explained that he’d gone to work in the bush, like most young men in Portuguese Creek. But after a couple of years he’d jumped at an offer to work in the machine shop. A mechanic. “A grease monkey now. I lie on my back under trucks and steam engines, with grease on my hands and oil dripping on my face.”

He showed her his right hand, which even after the morning’s harsh loofah scrub in the sauna had fine dark lines in the creases of his palms.

“All the better to tell your future,” she said, taking the hand in hers. “Let me see.”

It was her husband’s opinion that forecasting futures during a funeral was in bad taste. “Today, it is enough just to
have
a future — when your old friend has just been shut up in a coffin.”

“But
Arvo
is not in a coffin.” She dismissed her husband’s concern without so much as looking at him. “I can clearly see in this palm that he will soon marry a lady grease monkey and have several baby grease monkeys and live happily ever after.”

“As happy as you?” Arvo said.

The husband had turned to talk to the gentleman on his other side.

“Of course,” she said, as though the question was of little importance and someone in the far corner more interesting.

How long was he supposed to sit here waiting for Herbie to return from the motel? Had he forgotten this visit was not their final destination? There was lunch with the Hagens, he hoped, and then the rest of the journey to the city. Herbie had been known to lose track of time. A half hour was little different from a full morning to him, who had never had to punch a time clock and had depended on Bert Peterson to get him out of the house in time to catch the Company’s crummy for his ride to work.

He stepped out of the hearse and followed the weed-infested strip of broken pavement to the main door. Who would choose to stay in this neglected building, up this awful back road?

Inside the bare office a young woman in a blue smock was vacuuming the faded orange carpet. She turned off her machine and pushed a wrist back over her hair. “I wondered how long you would sit out there,” she said, and shook her curls about. “We don’t get many visitors arriving in a hearse!” She altered her voice as though speaking only to herself: “Of course there’ve been one or two who left in one!”

Arvo did not say that he was surprised to hear that visitors arrived here at all, by whatever means. Well, there was a pickup parked in the meagre shade of the apple tree, though this could belong to the manager. Or this housekeeper. Or someone planning to demolish the place.

“My friend seems to have disappeared,” he said. “I saw him go through this door but he may have been captured and sent to fight in the Middle East since then.”

“If he’s fighting anywhere it will be in Room 14,” the young woman said.

Of course this little one-storey motel could not have as many as fourteen rooms. The doors down the hallway of its only floor were numbered 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 as though an entire ten-room wing had been removed, or a second floor planned but abandoned.

He tapped on the door to Room 14.

Something about the old man who opened the door made Arvo think he’d seen him before. The face was broad and raw and flushed up the colour of old brick. The few white hairs on his head stood up and waved around like seaweed anchored to the ocean floor.

Herbie got to his feet from a sagging armchair against the window wall and waved him in. “That’s Arvo there. Come on in and help yourself to a beer.” To the other man he said, “Arvo drove me here.” Then he sat again, cradling a beer can in his lap. “This here is Sandy Macgregor, used to work with me on the road crew.”

“Used to be his boss is what he means,” Macgregor said. “I don’t mind telling you what I just told him — when I seen you and that old hearse pull in I checked my pulse in case nobody told me yet that I’d croaked.”

A wine-coloured blanket had been thrown over the armchair, no doubt to cover holes or exposed springs. The double bed took up most of the space, which was made smaller still by the cardboard boxes that lined the walls. A hotplate sat on a little desk beside the bathroom door.

“You didn’t say if you’d take a beer with us,” the old man said.

“I’m driving,” Arvo said. “I haven’t the time for it anyway. We’ve got to get back on the road.”

“Me and Sandy been talking about my future,” Herbie said. He tilted up the beer and glugged awhile. “He’s the boss here till the owner gets back from Hawaii.”

“Is being the boss’s replacement a tough business?” Arvo asked. “Doing repairs and such?”

“Oh, he don’t expect repairs,” Macgregor said, grinning as though Arvo’s notion had been absurd. “Being boss while he’s away just means never leaving the place empty. I don’t get to go nowhere till he’s back.”

He heaved himself to his feet then, and went for the door. “Come with me. I’ll show you to your room.”

“What’s this?” Arvo said.

But neither Herbie nor the old man responded. They led the way out into the hall and down to the last door on the left.

Inside, stale air. A bed and dresser, a chair, a door open to a bathroom. The window looked out on a pile of brush someone’s bulldozer had pushed together for a fire that hadn’t yet been lit. Foxgloves had grown up through the tangled mess to bloom in free air.

“What is this, Herbie?” Arvo said. “You decided to stay the night rather than go to the city with us?”

Herbie sat on the side of the bed and tested the springs. A coarse dark blanket had been thrown over it. Presumably there were sheets somewhere. “Me and Sandy been talking. He’s gonna rent me this room.”

The old man nodded to confirm this. “Been on the phone a few times, making plans.”

“Does Peterson know about this?”

Herbie closed his eyes. “Bert doesn’t know nothing.”

Macgregor went to the door. “I’ll leave you two while I get some electricity into here.”

“You known this fellow a long time, have you?” Arvo said.

“I worked with Sandy once on the road crew, that’s all. I told you that.”

“And people actually live here?”

“Sandy lives here. So do a couple of other guys, off and on.” Herbie was silent again for a few moments, looking out through the dusty
window. “Sooner or later that Lucy will kick me out so the smartest thing is to beat her to it, move out and spoil her fun.”

Arvo felt himself starting to sweat — his forehead, the back of his neck. “Dammit, Herbie, this is no good. We’ve got to come up with something better than this. You want to be at Martin’s funeral don’t you?”

Herbie propped the pillow upright against the headboard and slid up to sit with his back against it. “I don’t like funerals. They make me sad.”

“Thinking of you living here makes
me
sad,” Arvo said. “Come on down to the city with us. Visit a museum. Eat in a restaurant. If we don’t come up with a better solution and you still don’t want to come home I promise I’ll bring you here on the way back.”

Herbie bowed his head and closed his eyes, presumably to consider this. When he opened his eyes it was only to give Arvo a narrow sidelong look. “Don’t promise me nothing you don’t mean. You’ll be in too much of a hurry to bother with a museum.”

“Then we’ll try to make the time for it. The rate we’re going now we may end up having to stay overnight. We could look for somewhere close to a museum.”

“Well,” Herbie said.

“Your friend will hold this room for you till we’re on our way back, if you still want it then.”

“Don’t worry,” Herbie said. “I’ll still want it. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

CHAPTER 9

SANDY MACGREGOR
walked out through the lobby with them but said goodbye on the front step, shaking Arvo’s hand and then Herbie’s, while promising to keep Herbie’s room for him. Arvo resisted the urge to ask who he’d be keeping it
from
? Who did he think would not only want to stay in a place like this but would insist on having the room with its view of that giant pile of dead trees and tangled roots?

At first he thought that being surprised and upset had caused him to forget where he’d left the hearse. Had he not parked it in the shade of that old apple tree? A chill of panic swept through him.

“What the hell is going on? Where’s the hearse?”

Sandy Macgregor hadn’t yet gone inside. “What hearse is that?”

“Have you got people that park cars out of sight like some fancy hotel?”

“Nobody’s here this week but me — and the cleaning lady.” The cleaning lady’s vacuum cleaner could be heard roaring somewhere inside. Apparently she hadn’t driven off in the hearse — unless, of course, she’d left the vacuum cleaner on in order to fool them while she made her getaway.

Sandy looked a bit blank, as though it was someone else’s turn to explain the situation. When no one did, he said, “I suppose it could’ve been that Enright bunch down the road. They drove off with Buddy Williams’ Saturn once.”

Arvo felt his stomach knot up. “You’ve got neighbours with a habit of stealing cars?”

Sandy Macgregor kicked at a clump of grass. “Not exactly neighbours.”

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean to people on this road?”

“They could be far away by now.”

“They can’t be far away. Not even thieves could make that hearse go any faster than a crawl.”

Sandy ran a palm over his stubbly jaw. “Enrights probably can. They could’ve been driving by in their old tow-truck when they seen your hearse. They’re a big old family farther down the road.”

“With a reputation for stealing?”

“I heard their old man was dying. Maybe he finally done it. That bunch wouldn’t think twice about stealing another man’s hearse if it meant saving money on a funeral. You stay put, I’ll get my truck.”

“This is my fault,” Herbie said.

Arvo did not respond. What could he say that he wouldn’t later regret?

Crammed into the cab of Sandy Macgregor’s pickup — Herbie in the middle — they sped down the rough pavement in silence, all three staring intensely ahead.

“How far could they get?” Arvo said. “I couldn’t’ve been inside for more than ten or fifteen minutes!”

Sandy’s body language told you he was only going through the motions to be polite, he knew they would never find the hearse, he probably even knew where the thieves had stashed it by now. He might have been in on the theft himself but wanted to impress his future renter with his willingness to be helpful.

“Watch out,” Herbie said. “Looks like pavement ends.”

“It does,” Sandy Macgregor said. “Hold on.”

All three bounced off the seat as the truck jolted down off the pavement onto coarse gravel, though Arvo was the only one whose head hit the roof. Maybe this would knock some sense into his noggin, he thought. How was it that his life could sometimes seem like one detour after another? Maybe this was something that happened to people who lived alone — no partner to give him a poke, reminding him to show a little backbone.