Smoke (13 page)

Later, when the others leave, Tom places the trusty bassinet beside his groggy wife and takes her hand. He knows that the premature delivery has unhinged her. He understands the insecurity that sleeps beneath her brave face. She can sometimes slip and fall, like any other woman. This insight, Tom suspects, is the reason Isabel fell in love with him. She secures her grip and when he kisses her she cries. Baby Elizabeth—Lizzie she is called—begins the first hour of her life soaked by her mother's tears.

Buster can't sleep. In his room he folds his good pair of trousers, removes lint from the shoulders of his only suit jacket and slips into it. He practises knotting his tie before the mirror. He understands intuitively that his mother and the baby were lucky to survive the delivery, though he wanted no more siblings, no successors to remind him of his deposition. Exhausted, he finally sets the fedora on his dresser, hangs up his clothes, slips the gun beneath his pillow and falls into the deepest sleep he's had in months.

The next morning Buster finds Alice pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor with Lizzie squalling in her arms. Hank is seated at the table, unshaven. He stinks of cigarettes and stale beer.

“Where's Mom?” asks Buster.

“Shush.” Hank squints and covers his ears.

“She's to stay in bed,” whispers Alice. “Allow her a chance to heal. Your father's asked me to help out for a couple of days until she's on her feet again.”

Buster moves to sit beside his brother. He scrapes his chair along the floor. “Where've you been, Hank?”

“Out.”

“No kidding. I looked for you. You're lucky nothing went wrong.”

Hank clasps his hands over his ears as Lizzie lets go another loud, high-pitched wail and Alice steps out of the room. “Cut the gas will you, my head hurts.”

“Were you with a girl?”

“Mind your own business. Or I'll see that you mind it.”

“Don't have a cow.”

A moment later Hank lifts his head. “Susan Rombout. Tell Dad and you're dead.”

“Susan? You better give her up, Hank.”

“What would you know about it?”

“You don't stand a chance. Susan told Gert from the beauty parlour and Gert told it to Mrs. Johnson who blabbed it to Jelly Bean who told the whole class: Susan would just as soon join the Baptists in not singing or card-playing, or even join a convent and become a bride to Jesus Christ himself before settling down with any boy from Smoke. She has ambitions. I'm telling you Hank, she's holding out for better options.”

“What could be better than this?” Hank pounds on his chest like he's King Kong.

Buster laughs, his brother the ape-man.

Hank wishes that he'd stopped after his second beer last night but Susan said she had to be up early in the morning and that put a quick end to their date. So he dropped her off at her house and carried on back to the hotel where he spent the rest of the night slinging one drink after another, feeling sorry for himself. He doesn't understand what happened; she'd agreed to a proper date, she'd laughed at his jokes and seemed to enjoy his company. She even permitted him to hold her hand. But when he kissed her and whispered in her ear she sat upright and went rigid like a belt pulled taut at both ends. “Girls!” he mutters.

“Up half the night screaming,” Alice returns with Lizzie. She sways and rocks the new baby. “Shush Lizzie. Shush.”

Unable to withstand his sister's shrieking any longer, Hank stands and leaves the room.

“Mrs. Gray?” Buster raps his knuckles on the table. “Is Doc John always calm in a pinch?”

“Pretty much. He's had a lot of practice.”

“He tells a good story too.”

Alice paces back and forth across the kitchen floor. She watches Buster lift an apple from the fruit bowl, toss it into the air and catch it. She heard about the gun incident twice at church, and Hazel says that Buster is the talk of the party line. Alice wonders whether John is having a questionable influence on the boy. “I know my husband's entertaining,” she says. “A showman in every sense of the word. But don't you think you should be spending time with your friends?”

Buster shines the apple on his shirt, bites into it and speaks through a juicy mouthful. “My other friends are dopes.”

Alice is shocked to hear Buster speak disparagingly about anyone. Then she notices his face when he grins at her; relaxed and easy. She's found this same expression upon her own face many times over the years when she's glanced in a mirror. She recognizes it as a particular kind of happiness. This is when she knows she shares John. He has given Buster the ability to laugh at himself, to accept fate. He did the same for her a long time ago. There are people who change us, she thinks. Make men where there once stood boys. Make poets where there once stood brutes. They give us back ourselves and they don't even know they've done it. Or maybe they do. “Just remember,” she says. “John's a humbug. Full of hot air. Don't pay him any mind.”

A
MAN IN A SIMPLE BLACK COAT
and hat sits in a car outside the dairy bar in Tillsonburg. Two young mothers appear from around the corner, pushing prams up the sidewalk at a brisk pace. They're on their way to see the first mounted scout regiment ride through town. The man conceals his face beneath the brim of his hat when they pass. Then he rolls his window down an inch and permits the cool biting air to wash over him. Sweat on his brow evaporates. Be calm, he tells himself. Be steady. If he acts as though he's meant to be here no one will suspect otherwise. He knows this from experience.

The air smells of possibility. He opens his door, the car still idling, and makes crisp, snowy footprints on the road. He approaches the front door of the dairy bar casually. There is no one inside but the young boy who works there. The man finds the boy's face in the reflection of a shiny chrome drink mixer and assesses that he is not the type given to rash behaviour or quick reflexes. The boy lumbers, drying sundae dishes with a tea towel, inspecting each glass for spots and then setting each back on the glittering blue and white countertop. A radio sits on top of a mint green Frigidaire. The boy appears to be singing. When he turns his back the man opens the door, steps inside and quickly crosses the room.

The dairy bar smells of fresh cold milk, chocolate syrup, butter scotch and cherry topping. He moves in behind the counter unnoticed and points two fingers stiffly into the boy's back. “Drop to the floor,” he says in a voice deeper than his own. “Do it fast. And don't turn around until you've counted to a thousand.” The boy does as instructed. He is shaking and has already wet himself. The man presses on the register's keys until the drawer springs open. He empties the cash into his wide coat pockets and walks out.

Five minutes later he is safely hidden in a dense brush on the outskirts of town. He counts the money and places the bills in the trunk of the car with the rest of his dwindling stash.

On the last day of school before winter break, Buster sits two rows ahead and one over from Jelly Bean. She has a clear view of him slouched in his seat with both legs stuck out in front and he can feel her watching, her eyes boring hot on the back of his neck. His arms are folded across his chest, hands tucked under his armpits. He might appear to be asleep if it wasn't for the fact that he is, every now and then, counting on his fingers. There's a pattern and Jelly Bean has noticed it: One two three. Pause. One two three four. Five and he switches to count on the other hand. She observes, intently chewing on her thumbnail as if she is a small burrowing creature. She hears Susan whispering to Karen and Sandra. They are talking about her. She squirms as Susan pokes her in the shoulder blade with a compass needle.

“Psst? Psst, monster-lover? Does he set your heart on fire?”

Susan tosses a wad of bubble gum onto Jelly Bean's desktop. It sticks. Jelly Bean ignores it, though the smell of fruity sweetness reaches her and makes her nose itch. “Kiss him and I'll let you eat lunch with us.”

“Amscray,” Jelly Bean hisses. “Leave me alone.” She turns and tosses the gum back. It lands on the floor at Susan's feet. She returns to her work and again is poked in the back with the compass tip. “Ouch!” Susan breaks the skin.

“I hear you're going to try and win Miss Tobacco Queen this year.”

“I am not.”

“Your mother says you are. You don't even know how to hand or tie leaves.”

Mr. Kichler, a podgy stump of a man rooted to the front of the classroom with the Canadian map pulled down over the blackboard, stares a warning at the girls. “Windsor,” he says, pointing to the southern tip of the province of Ontario with his yardstick. “What can any of you tell me about this city?”

Jelly Bean scrambles to write in her notebook, her heart racing. She can hear her mother's voice echoing through her brain. “Nothing like your father. Not a trace of Indian in you.” Jelly Bean does not want to enter the beauty contest. She would rather go colour blind. How will she wheedle out of it?

Buster doesn't move to write. In fact, he's been taking no notes whatsoever. He busies his mind counting the months until the end of school. He counts the days of the week, the number of provinces, tries to name all forty-eight American states, forgetting that Hawaii and Alaska have just voted to join. He even counts the number of days that he spent in bed at the hospital.

“Windsor,” Mr. Kichler repeats, walking down the aisle and towering over him. “Who can tell us the claim to fame of Windsor?”

Behind Mr. Kichler is a wall of windows and through them the back field covered in snow. Buster sits silently, remembering the facts as he's heard them. “Speakeasies,” he answers without thinking. “The river was lined with hidden parlours and illegal booze.”

The room erupts into a collective fit of laughter and Mr. Kichler stomps his right foot on the floor to restore order. “We are not talking about the Prohibition era. We are talking about the present day.” Donny and Ivan stare at their desktops. Susan stifles a giggle and Karen and Sandra bite their lips. Jelly Bean feels beads of sweat forming on her brow, under her arms. She can't stand to see Buster on display like this. “Now I'll ask you one more time,” repeats Mr. Kichler. “What is the city's claim to fame?”

“It's the southernmost city in Canada,” blurts Jelly Bean. She slumps back in her seat, embarrassed to have spoken out of turn.

“Very good.” Mr. Kichler nods in her direction.

“Very good,” mimics Susan under her breath.

“Windsor has a salt mine,” adds Buster. “And a cool bridge.”

“Do you recall the name of this bridge, Mr. McFiddie?”

“The Ambassador Bridge,
Mr. Kichler
.” He meets his teacher's muddy eyes. Of course he remembers; that bridge was where Mo Axler, Bernstein's ace machine-gunner, blew off some fellow's hands for thieving. Doc John said Mo left the poor bastard tied upside-down to the rail so he'd bleed to death like kosher beef. You never steal from your own pot, the doctor warned. Of course he remembers. What's wrong with everybody this morning?

“I'm glad you've been listening. For a minute I thought you took after your brother. Hank never was particularly good in school.”

Buster's fingers tighten into two fists and turn from pinkish to dead white knots. They dig into his rib cage. “No I don't take after anyone,” he says. “In case you haven't noticed.”

Mr. Kichler takes a couple of nervous steps backwards down the aisle and his right foot lands on the chewing gum. It sticks to the toe of his shoe. He lifts his foot, which only stretches the pink mass from the floor to wherever he next steps. He pretends it isn't there. Susan and Ivan stifle laughs and Jelly Bean averts her eyes, embarrassed for her teacher but also secretly pleased with herself. Buster turns in his seat and mouths two words to her. “Good one.”

Mr. Kichler returns to the front of the room exasperated, where he continues to scuff his shoe on the floor as though no one has noticed the gum. He turns to the class. “Newfoundland joined Canada in which year?” Hands fly up.