The Americans Are Coming (24 page)

This night, Lindon decided that he didn’t want to hear the child being beaten anymore. Last night’s beating had been more severe than usual. That day, he had gone to the bank and withdrawn two hundred dollars with the thought in mind to go on a drunk. He decided that the hotel would be a good place to start. “Maybe at the hotel, someone will talk to me.”

When Lindon Tucker entered through the glass doors of the hotel, he was met by a good-looking young gentleman in a red jacket with brass buttons.

“Checking in, sir?” asked the bellman.

“You work here?” asked Lindon.

“Yes, sir,” said the bellman and thought, “No, no, I’m dressed in this outfit because I’m a monkey grinder.”

“Kin ya git drunk here?” asked Lindon.

“There’s a bar right in there, sir.”

Lindon headed across the lobby toward the lounge. Inside, he sat at the bar and waited for service. The lounge was nearly full and the bartender was very busy.

“What would you like?” yelled the bartender.

“Gimme a glass o’ roy whiskey and a bottle o’ Moosehead,” yelled Lindon and scanned the other people at the bar to see if his order was making an impression. He smiled and winked at a couple of people, but no one seemed to take notice.

“A single or a double?” asked the bartender.

“Yeah, sure,” said Lindon.

The bartender poured Lindon nearly a double. He recognized Lindon as a country hick and would shortpour him all evening long.

Lindon tossed the rye down and chased it with a quaff of ale. “Gimme another roy,” he said.

*

Shirley Ramsey took a line-by-line, grey-hair-by-grey-hair inspection of her body. Palidin was gone, and she, for the first time in many years, had the privacy to undress completely without the possibility of being interrupted. Dryfly never came home until at least midnight.

Shirley Ramsey scanned her leg – “varicose veins, but not too bad.” She scanned her belly – “bigger than Bert Todder’s,” she thought.

Bert Todder was a bachelor who did his own cooking. His diet consisted primarily of potatoes. Sometimes he’d cook a piece of salmon or venison to accompany the potatoes, and he ate many, many oranges and drank much ginger ale at Bernie Hanley’s store, but primarily, he ate potatoes. For supper, he’d boil as many as ten and would not hesitate to eat the whole lot. If he left any, he’d have them fried for breakfast. He had the biggest belly in Brennen Siding.

When Bert Todder was asked why he let his belly get so big, he replied, “When ya got a good set o’ tools, ya should build a shed over them. Tee, hee, ha, ha, sob, sob.”

Shirley eyed her breasts. They depressed her. They tapered from chest to nipple like skin hankerchiefs with a marble dropped in each one.

She noticed how brown her skin was. “That’s the Indian in me,” she said aloud to the kitchen.

Her eyes also indicated Micmac ancestry. Her great-great-grandmother had been a Micmac Indian from the Northwest. Her grandfather had been an immigrant from Ireland. She had the dark eyes, skin, hair, and high cheekbones of the Micmac. Her nose, mouth and chin were Irish. Her great-grandmother had been English; her grandmother Dutch and her mother Scottish. Her children had blue eyes and did not look Indian at all. Shirley bathed, donned her best dress (the
Helen MacDonald hand-me-down), and went to the table to smoke, think and take inventory.

“There’s one thing I kin say,” she thought, “I raised a family.”

Shirley was the youngest of nine children. Her mother had given birth to her under the very capable hands of a midwife. The midwife had delivered all nine children successfully. It was not the midwife’s fault that Shirley’s mother had taken one look at the baby Shirley, said, “It’s a girl,” and passed away. It was as though she was giving up her space, air and baby-making ability to Shirley.

Shirley spent the first twelve years of her life developing a body. At twelve she had been quite beautiful, with brown hair, dark eyes and an attractive smile. She had developed a sleek young body that yearned to be fondled, caressed and loved, but it wasn’t until she reached the age of fourteen that she was able to put her body to the test. After just one night with Buck Ramsey, she learned that her body was as good for making babies as her mother’s.

At the ages of sixteen and fourteen respectively, Buck and Shirley married. Junior was born three months later. At first, luck seemed to be with them; Buck’s father died and left Buck the crumbling old house and gravel pit. They moved in and waited for someone to buy the gravel, but no construction was applied to the road that year. Buck didn’t have a job and couldn’t get one. He was forced to seek employment in Fredericton, and then in Saint John, where he found part-time labor loading ships. In Saint John, Buck also found a thirty-five year old widow to live with. As the relationship with the widow grew, Buck returned to Brennen Siding less and less.

Buck had never loved Shirley and Shirley had never loved Buck. They got married because they “had to” – Shirley was pregnant. He didn’t love the widow either, but life was a hell of a lot easier in Saint John. As Shirley began to deteriorate under the stress and wear of baby-making, poverty and aging, Buck started to find her too unattractive for his tastes, and eventually even found her repulsive – repulsive, that is, until he got drunk. When Buck Ramsey got drunk, he stayed that way for three or four days. On about the third day, he’d start
feeling sorry for himself and Shirley, head for Brennen Siding, stay drunk all the time he was there, make a baby and head back to Saint John, hung over and broke.

After making Dryfly, Buck returned to Saint John to find his thirty-five-year-old widow in bed with another man. With no money and no place to live, he took to bumming on the streets. On this meagre income, he did not eat much. His main source of nourishment became wine.

After several months, he moved to Fredericton, and for a matter of a year or so, it seemed he might pull himself together. He got a job as a janitor, bought himself a guitar and a new radio. He moved into a room on Charlotte Street and even managed to save a few hundred dollars. Then, he started drinking again. On the third day of overindulgence, he thought of Shirley. He would have gone to Brennen Siding, but for one thing – even Buck Ramsey didn’t have the gall to face Shirley after eleven years of not being around to help her raise the family. He took some of his money and went to Saint John to see his widow instead.

The Saint John widow saw him coming and locked the door. Buck bought more wine and went in search of his cronies down by the wharf.

Most of the degenerates he knew had either died, or moved away in the year he’d been away and he found himself alone, drunk, cold and without shelter in the middle of February. He lay down by a crate, cuddled himself to keep warm, drank some more wine and passed out. In the middle of the night, a foghorn woke him up briefly. He looked about him to see a ship and an unloaded cargo, a few lights and drifting snow.

“G’day,” he said to himself, “I suppose I ain’t havin’ too hard a time!”

He then went back to sleep, never to awaken.

“At least I raised a family,” spoke Shirley once more to the kitchen.

But now, with Palidin in Toronto, or wherever he was, and Dryfly running the roads night and day, Shirley was alone. The loneliness closed in on her like a coffin lid. With her family she had been poor, but never lonely. There had been
rough moments when she hadn’t known where the next meal was coming from, but there had always been someone to hold onto.

“I’m gettin’ old,” she thought. “My family’s gone and I’m all alone. Nobody loves me, nobody cares. Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”

*

Shadrack Nash was very unhappy. His mother and father nagged him constantly.

“Go to work,” they’d yell. “If ya don’t go to work, go to school! Ya can’t lay around the house and play the banjo for the rest of your life!”

Shadrack was getting so annoyed with the constant nagging that he started playing the banjo just to drown out their voices. The banjo playing did not help the situation. The constant plucking of the sonorous strings was eating at the ends of Bob and Elva’s nerves. There was never a moment’s peace in the house.

Bob Nash had just read the same paragraph of the
Family Herald
three times. Elva had just added three stitches too many to a sock she was knitting. Shadrack had just played “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” for the twentieth time.

“I could throw something at him,” thought Bob.

“I could stab him with a knitting needle,” thought Elva.

“John Deere, John Deere, John Deere . . . good tractor . . . John Deere . . . . damn! I’m losing my mind.” Bob Nash was reading the John Deere tractor ad on the back cover of the
Family Herald
. He wanted to read the article inside on scabby potatoes, but he couldn’t concentrate. The banjo seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Finally, Bob started to roll the
Family Herald
into a tight round tube. His nerves were screaming for help and he was about to come to the rescue. Bob stood. “I’ll beat the shit out of him,” he thought. “A good thrashin’s just what he needs.”

Shadrack did not see Bob’s approach.

WHACK! went the
Family Herald
.

BOING! went the banjo.

“What the . . .”

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

“Stop it!”

“Take that!” – WHACK! – “you little bastard . . . and that!” WHACK!

Bob Nash hit Shadrack on top of the head with the
Family Herald
. To Bob, it felt very good. To Shadrack, it stung and startled him so that he dropped the banjo. Shad knew from experience, from the look in Bob’s eyes, that he was in for a thrashing. Shad was uncertain about what he had done to deserve it, but he knew it was too late to discuss it.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Everytime Bob hit Shad, he felt better. The silence of the banjo and the whack of the
Family Herald
on Shad’s body was like music to his ears, a pacifying symphony that conquered and replaced “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“I could do this all night,” thought Bob. WHACK, WHACK, WHACK . . . WHACK . . . a black eye, WHACK, a bloody nose, WHACK, a bruised arm. WHACK on the bum, WHACK on the leg, WHACK on the shoulder. Bob Nash, for the moment, was gloriously insane. The nagging wife and the lazy, banjo-playing boy had removed a brick from his structure; he had been pushed temporarily over the edge.

WHACK, WHACK!

At first, Shad saw it as just another beating, but soon enough he began to realize that things were getting out of control. He realized he was cornered, that there was no escape. He was being attacked by his father and was more than just a little leery about fighting back. He took a couple of more blows. They were getting harder and they weren’t slowing down. There was a strange wild look in his father’s eyes. Shad knew that he had to do something. “But what? I can’t hit my father . . .” WHACK!

Shadrack tensed his muscles and gathered his strength. He made a blind dive at Bob. Thud! It was like colliding with a load of bricks.

WHACK! WHACK!

Elva Nash watched contentedly. The beating was a tension release for her too. “Shad’s getting what he deserves,” she thought.

Once again Shad cringed and gathered his strength, and once again made a plunge. Thump! Bob Nash was still solid.

“Might as well run into a brick wall,” thought Shad.

By now, Shad too had lost all reason. He started counting for his next attack. “One, two, three . . .” He could have been counting bricks.

At the count of three, Shad’s foot connected with Bob’s crotch, a definite weak point in the wall. On the count of four the
Family Herald
loosened and fell from Bob’s hand. On the count of five, Shad saw his father fall to this knees in agony – thump! – like a load of bricks. On the count of six, Shadrack dashed for the door. Seven, eight . . . on the count of nine, Shad glanced over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued. He saw Bob Nash kneeling, holding on to himself. Shad gave a frightened glance at his astonished mother.

“Dad’s a brick short of a load!” he yelled, and ran from the house.

*

Dryfly returned to Nutbeam’s camp with a pencil, paper and envelopes. He sat at the table across from Nutbeam and the two began to contrive a letter. The letter was to Johanna Banks in Mars Hill, Maine.

“What d’ya want to say?” asked Dryfly.

“You ready?”

“Yep. All ready.”

“Dear Johannah, how are you, I am fine, hope you are the same. Dryfly is writing this letter for me. What’s going on in Mars Hill? Was it a good year for potatoes? Is Ned dead yet? How’s Willy? I am fine and living in Canada. How’s Alex and Norah?”

Nutbeam ran out of things to say. “What’ll I say now?” he asked.

“Ah . . . how about the weather? Tell ’er how the weather is.”

“The weather’s good. How’s the weather in Mars Hill? It was cold here last night. It will soon be winter.”

Dryfly wrote down Nutbeam’s dictations with many misspellings and little punctuation.

“Ya think that’s enough?” asked Nutbeam when Dryfly had scratched out the word “winter.”

“I don’t know . . . maybe.”

“Put, ‘Yours, Nutbeam’ on it and that’ll do.”

Dryfly finished off the letter and put it in an envelope. He wrote “Johanna Banks, Mars Hill, Maine” on it and sealed it.

“Ya want me to mail it for ya, Nutbeam?”

“No, no, that’s all right. I’ll mail it.”

“Wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“No, that’s all right, I’ll mail it.”

Nutbeam held the letter up and looked at it proudly. He then took it to the shelf beside the stove and laid it down carefully, as if it was breakable, beside a pot. He put a block of birch in the stove and went back to the table. He turned the lamp down a bit. The fire in the stove lulled them with snaps and crackles. The camp was cozy and warm.

“Thanks for writing that letter, Dry. You’re a good lad.”

“No trouble. Any time.”

*

A knock sounded at Nutbeam’s door.

“That you, Shad?” yelled Nutbeam.

“It’s me, Shadrack,” came the muffled voice through the door. Nutbeam unlatched and opened the door and in stepped the battered and bruised Shadrack Nash. He was limping and had a bloody nose and a swollen eye. The eye was already starting to turn black.