Monstrous Affections (11 page)

“Do you
really
mean it? Or are you just saying nice to get in my
good books? So I’ll help you down?”

“Dad was right,” said Blaine. The tears had stopped, and he
was able to look at Shelly with a directness that made her want to
cringe. There was a twang, and a couple of strands came loose of his
shoulder, even as the tar baby’s legs started to unwrap from around
his waist. “We got to be better to each other.”

Dad was right
. Shelly felt her own anger melt away at that. Mom
may not have understood, but at least Blaine did.

“Dad was right,” she said. “That’s right — teamwork.”

“What?”

“Something Dad said,” said Shelly.

Gingerly, avoiding the strings of tar along the way, Shelly made
her way down the rest of the stairs to where Blaine still dangled.
She held the tea-towel under her arm, and unscrewed the top of the
turpentine, and soaked a corner of the towel with it. The tar baby’s
free arm dangled gnarly fingers near her cheek, but Shelly pulled
away and the tar baby didn’t follow. She handed the towel up to
Blaine, making herself think kind thoughts.

“I hope you learned your lesson,” she said, as Blaine touched
the turpentine to the tar baby’s other hand. Shelly stepped back as
that arm came free. The tar baby was completely disentangled from
Blaine, but it didn’t fall to the ground — as it came free it swung up
among the tar strands nearer the ceiling — like a big, sticky spider,
in a web spun of its own substance.

Blaine fell to the floor as he came loose of that web — and it
seemed as though he landed all right. But he winced as he stood,
and his legs trembled under him.

“Dad was right,” he said. “I wanted to hit you upstairs, and when
I went to, I took a swing — and then I was down here! Hitting the tar
baby, getting all stuck up like Mom.”

Shelly nodded. “That’s how it worked for Mr. Baldwin at prison,
I bet,” she said. “The tar baby smells the mad, and it doesn’t matter
who it’s directed at; it draws the mad to itself.”

“So why didn’t you wind up down here? When you kicked the
bed?”

Shelly thought about that. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.
“I just wanted you to quit it — I didn’t think you’d hit your head.”

Blaine looked down. He really was a sad mess, Shelly thought —
hair all black and sticky, and his pyjamas just as bad. And he looked
weaker, too — the tar baby had taken it out of him, like it had from
Mom. The only reason he was standing, Shelly thought, was because
maybe Blaine had had more in him to begin with. “I guess it was
because
I
wanted to hurt
you
then.”

“I guess that’s how it works,” said Shelly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Stop apologizing.”

“Okay.” Blaine started scrubbing at himself, but it was clear even
with the turpentine, it was going to be a harder job than he had the
strength for right now.

“Come on,” said Shelly — and she took his arm, sticky as it was.
They started up the stairs together.

“What in fuck you get into, kid?”

Mark Hollins was sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon
open and half empty in front of him, when they came out of the
door. The sleeves of his denim jacket were rolled up, and Shelly could
see a dark green shape that had been tattooed underneath the thick
black hair on his forearm. There was no telling what it represented.
Dad sat across the table from Mark Hollins, and there was a paper
bag on the table between them.

Dad didn’t even look back.

“Don’t curse in front of the children,” said Dad.

“Ah, fuck you,” said Mark Hollins. “Gonna learn it somewhere.”

Now Dad did turn around, and he looked Blaine up and down. He nodded slowly.

“Learn your lesson, son?” Dad was smiling ever so slightly.

“Yes, sir,” said Blaine.

“Good. Take that turpentine upstairs to the bathroom, and start
washing yourself. I’ll be up to help in a minute.”

Mark Hollins finished a long pull from his bottle, and slammed it
down again onto the tabletop. He spoke directly to Blaine.

“You take your time, son. Your daddy and me got some business.”

As Mark Hollins spoke, Shelly saw Dad reach up and put his hand
on the paper bag. Mark Hollins saw it too, because his eyes darted
immediately to Dad’s hands. They had that same discouraging look
to them they had when he’d smiled at Shelly, and now even the smile
was gone.

“Ah, shit, Scott — don’t try this crap on me. We’re splitting it like
always.”

“No,” said Dad, his voice as level and calm as could be, “not like
always. Not like when I did time for you. I’m keeping all the cash.
And the truck. You
owe
me.”

Shelly felt Blaine’s hand on her shoulder — he was squeezing
too tight, but she could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was
just scared — like she was starting to get. She was piecing things
together, or maybe just admitting things to herself: like, where did
that truck come from? Dad didn’t even have a valid driver’s license
anymore, and the family hadn’t owned a car for years. And cash? She
wondered if the cash was in that bag on the table; and if so, just how
they’d managed to get it.

“I owe you shit,” said Mark Hollins.

“That’s your opinion.”

She and Blaine backed out of the kitchen and into the living
room. Blaine’s hand was trembling, and she could hear him sniffling
as he pulled her further into the living room, around behind Mom’s
television chair. He crouched down, and Shelly crouched beside him,
her arm over his filthy shoulders.

In the kitchen, the conversation escalated — at least on Mark
Hollins’ side. He slammed his bottle down on the table, not hard
enough to shatter, but enough to send a gout of booze up through
the neck and splash on his white-knuckled fist.

“Give me the Goddamn money!” Hollins stood up, and put his
arms under the table. Dad lifted his beer and the bag, and swung
back as the table fell over onto its side, empty beer bottles and
Shelly’s old pop can scattering across the linoleum floor. “I risked
my
fuckin
’ neck tonight!”

Dad got up from his chair and stood with his arms crossed — beer
in one fist, bag in the other — and he chuckled, shaking his head.

Shelly pinched her nose as the smell of tar grew stronger — it
seemed like she could actually see the fumes, coming out of the half-open door to the basement in a thin grey cloud. Blaine didn’t cover
his nose — he probably smelled enough tar his nose wouldn’t even
tell it — but his hands were up over his ears, and his eyes were shut.

In the kitchen, Hollins reached around to his hip pocket, and he
pulled something out that flashed metal in the kitchen light. Dad
stopped chuckling as Mark Hollins held it in front of him, and even
Shelly could see what it was: an X-Acto knife.

“That’s it, you fucker,” said Mark Hollins. “You’re right we’re not
splitting this money. You’re going to give it all to me — isn’t that
right?”

Dad looked straight at his old buddy Mark Hollins, and shook his
head. “Get out of here,” he said, “if you know what’s good for you.”

And that set him off. Hollins shouted something Shelly couldn’t
hear properly, and he lunged with the X-Acto blade —

— straight at Dad, he must have thought —

— but in fact, straight through the door to the basement.

Mark Hollins made a painful-sounding clatter as he tumbled over
the first few steps, but the falling-down sounds ended quickly. There
was nothing afterwards but a series of shouts — first surprised, then
angry and finally just frightened. Dad walked over to the doorway
and leaned over, both arms outstretched against the door frame. He
laughed like he laughed when Mom got it earlier on. “What were you
saying, Mark?” Dad stopped to cough — the tar-fumes were pretty
thick — and went on: “You want all the money? Truck too? You want
this house, Mark?”

Mark shouted something back, and now Shelly was sure it wasn’t
just bad hearing on her part — he was making no sound anyone could
understand.

“I’ll leave you to figure your way out of that one,” said Dad. “Then
we can talk about how to divide things up, from now on.”

He pushed himself off the door, and swung it shut, then looked
to the living room.

“Blaine?” he said.

“Y-yes, sir?” Blaine stuck his head up from behind the chair.

“Get on upstairs like I told you to. I’ll be along in a minute.”

“Yes, sir,” said Blaine. He got up and went to the stairs. Shelly
followed, but Dad told her to wait behind a minute. He had some
things, he said, to say to her.

Shelly went to her Dad. He picked up the table and set it right, and
pulled the chairs back in place.

“You’re in pretty good shape tonight, little girl,” he said. “Didn’t
feel the need to hit the tar baby?”

“No,” she said.

Dad nodded. “That’s good. Not everyone needs to learn from
their own mistakes. What did you learn tonight?”

Shelly opened her mouth, and closed it again. There was a noise
from behind the basement door — like a big cushion hitting against
the stairs. She had been about to say
team work
, but that sound
stopped her.

“Little girl?”

“It’s . . .” She looked down at her relatively clean hands. “. . . it’s
gotten bigger,” she said. “There’s tar
everywhere
now.”

Dad nodded. “That’s what Mr. Baldwin said might happen. His
tar baby got pretty big in its time, although it didn’t stay that way
forever. Just while it soaked it up . . . all that anger . . . aggression . . .”
Dad’s face went sour “. . .
misplaced
authority.”

“What does misplaced authority mean?” asked Shelly.

Dad patted her back. “Something you’ll never have to find out
about,” he said. “Let’s just say, the other prisoners aren’t the only
ones a fellow has to fear in jail. There’s also the damn guards . . .”

The thumping from below stopped — but there was another
sound now: distant sirens, wafting across the scrub from the
direction of the highway. Shelly looked out the window at the red
truck Dad had driven home from his walk, and at the brown paper
bag Mark Hollins had wanted so badly he’d pulled out a knife and
knocked over a table.

“Go upstairs now,” Dad said. “Tell your brother I’ll just be another
minute.”

Shelly did as she was told — but she stopped on the stairs, and
peered over the banister to the kitchen.

Dad sat slouched back a bit in the chair, as peaceful and quiet
as ever, as the sirens grew louder, and Shelly marvelled: she
still
couldn’t imagine her Dad taking a gun and pointing it at a grocery
store man, and saying he’d kill him if he didn’t give over some cash.
Any more than she could imagine him breaking the window of a
shiny red pickup truck that belonged to someone else, and taking it
for himself.

Mom was wrong, so wrong: Dad wasn’t a bad man at all. In spite
of what everyone thought about him. As Shelly continued up the
stairs, she hoped the police who were running that siren could see
the goodness in Dad too; she hoped they wouldn’t be
too
mad about
everything that had happened tonight.

The basement, after all, was only so big.

“The trouble with places like this,” said my sister Lenore, “is other
people’s kids.”

Nick, Lenore’s third boyfriend ever and the coolest one yet, took
a long sip of his coffee. “Other people’s kids?” he said mildly. “As
opposed to your own?”

“I don’t have any kids right now, thank God.” Lenore sat down
at the picnic table next to Nick. “But I had the worst time in the
line. There were two little boys — must have been twins — who were
playing this game of SCREAM, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Their mom didn’t even notice.” She set down her cinnamon pretzel
and jammed a straw into the top of her diet root beer. “On my way
back, I saw a kid running around with his poopy diaper. I know it was
a ‘he’ because he was holding the diaper over his head and yelling,
‘LOOKIT MY POOPY DIAPER!’”

“More SCREAM,” I said.

“With poop.” Nick smiled. He was
so
cool. “Kids are wacky,” he
said.

Lenore shook her head. “Terrible. Look around! Other people’s
kids are terrible!”

We looked around. The picnic common of Natch’s Highway Grill
and Fun-Park was full of kids, other people’s kids, I guess, and yeah,
they were all pretty terrible.

But why shouldn’t they be? Natch’s was located on the highway,
exactly halfway between Carlingsburg and the Elbow Lakes
tourist region, and today was exactly halfway through Labour Day
Monday. So of course that meant that about a half of all the kids in
Carlingsburg were on their way home from their family cottages. It
was their last day of summer vacation, and each and every one of
them knew that when they woke up in the morning they would be
looking at just over three months before Christmas and their next
scheduled good time. I myself had been facing this grim reality,
along with the prospect of starting Grade Nine all but friendless in
a high school whose main problem was too many cliques. So if these
kids were a little hopped up on sugar and grouchy enough to fall
down in the grass, kicking their legs in the air and screaming like
the three-year-olds they were . . .

Hey, I could relate.

In fact, a couple of years ago I would have been one of those kids.
We’d been stopping at Natch’s every summer since Lenore was a
little kid and I was a baby. Dad used to joke that Oliver Natch’s old
highway rest stop had grown up with me. When I was little, Natch’s
was just a burger joint on the northbound side of the highway,
nestled in a semi-circle of low rocky hills, and surrounded by a dark
forest of big pine and cedar trees. I was too young to remember it
like that, but one of our family pictures is of the four of us standing
in front of the little restaurant — Dad with a big suntanned arm over
Mom’s shoulder, Lenore holding me and giggling like an idiot while
I grabbed her ear. I don’t know who took the picture — maybe Mr.
Natch himself did it, because he probably spent more time there in
those days.