When the Saints (3 page)

Grandma Jean stitched this all together from jagged scraps of memory and town gossip. My father was like a period at the end of the story, but of course it didn’t end there. Why the hell Ma married Daddy, I’ll never understand.

After about an hour, I’m sick of thinking about it. I stand up, spit in the river and head back up the road.

W
EST IS STANDING BARE-CHESTED IN THE KITCHEN
when I let myself in. He gets a hard-on as soon as he sees me. We screw for a while on his reclining chair before he goes to work. A couple of things I learned about him overnight are that he
doesn’t have a last name and he doesn’t drink coffee. I don’t think I can trust anyone who doesn’t drink coffee.

The door slams and for fun I yell, “Have a good day at work, honey!”

His house is all right even though it hasn’t got an upstairs. It’s damp and the ceilings are low, but he has some houseplants and you can tell he pushes a mop around now and then. I pour myself a glass of water and read all the magnets on his fridge.
Tim’s Autobody. 2-4-1 Pizza.
There’s one shaped like a fish that says,
Do Unto Others.
I survey the kitchen and try to imagine it with a nice tablecloth and curtains on the windows. The walls are bare except for a calendar and a small wooden shelf holding a cookbook and a framed picture of an auburn-haired woman with nice tanned legs and her arms around West. I wonder how he messed that up.

I open the cookbook and read the inscription:
Merry Christmas, West! Now learn how to cook and stop mooching scraps at our house.

In the bathroom, I wipe down the mirror. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good hard look at myself. After I got off the bus in Halifax, I hitchhiked up the 101 and met a nice family from Paradise who offered to let me crash in their teepee while I decided where to go next. The “teepee” was a homemade contraption draped in My Little Pony comforters and tarps. Instead of a firepit, they stuck an electric space heater in there and ran extension cords up to the house. The whole thing was a fire trap and smelled like nail polish remover, but the droopy mattresses piled on top of each other made for the best sleep of my life.

I had high hopes for Paradise based on the name and hung around a couple of weeks to see if anything was going on. Nothing was. Unless you count glow-in-the-dark karaoke in a church basement. The microphone shone electric pink and a heavy-set woman sang “The Rose” into it with such passion that sweat soaked through the underarms of her caftan. She seemed to think I was a secret talent scout from New York City, kept looking over during the solo break to gauge my reaction. Eventually I just admitted to myself that I was inching my way back home, walked to the side of the highway and stuck my thumb out.

I look more like my mother now that I’m finally here. We’ve got the same stringy hair and that caged-animal look in our eyes. She creeps into my mind more than usual these days. Quick snapshots of her. She used to paint tiny hearts and things on my fingernails before that was popular. She hardly ever laughed, but when she did, it sounded like a rusty motorbike starting up. We’d start imitating it and she’d clam up again.

I poke around in his cabinets. I figure if there’s a chance of that redhead coming back and catching me here, finding makeup in a drawer would be a good sign. Women leave behind pots and pans, sometimes clothes, but never makeup. Once you find that shade of lipstick that subtly distracts attention away from the rest of your face, you’d crawl down an outhouse to retrieve it. There’s no trace of her.

I fish my purse out from under the bed for my own crusty makeup tubes and use them to freshen up a little, but then I figure I could do with a shower, so I wipe it all off again. The stall is tiny and the walls are wood panelled instead of waterproof
so the wood’s gone all grey and soft and there’s mould in between the slats. The shower head just gives a trickle and the water smells rank. It takes me half the time I’m in there to figure out how to make it run hot, and when I get out, the phone is ringing and ringing.

“Hello?”

“You find the towels?”

“You watching me on a surveillance camera?”

“What?”

“I just got out of your shower. I’m standing here dripping.”

“There’s a clean towel in the hall closet.”

“It’s the only thing clean, then,” I lie.

“I had to rip off all the tiles to get at the pipes.”

“And you still didn’t manage to fix the pipes.”

“You’re welcome to leave any time. Thought you’d left this morning when I woke up.”

“You didn’t seem disappointed that I hadn’t.”

“Well, anyway. Wipe the floor up when you’re done.”

“What? A fancy place like this doesn’t have housekeeping service?”

“The door’s through the kitchen.”

“You home for supper?”

“And lock up when you leave. I like my television.”

I hang up and look out the window at a few scraggly trees I don’t know the name of. The leaves brushing up against the window are polka-dotted with brown holes and it reminds me of seeing Ma’s dress all chewed up in the closet.

Ran out of town.

I sit on the bed staring at my bare thighs and wonder what’s happening in Blood Rain. That’s the reserve I was living on for a while before I wore out my welcome. I was staying with this guy, Jared, but it didn’t work out between us. It wasn’t my fault, but they weren’t very nice to me when they had that big meeting. A medicine woman there told me I have a soul like a feather and if I don’t attach myself to something I’ll be floating forever. She said I needed to hang off a cliff or nearly drown to get some weight and when I told her no thanks, she said fine, float forever then. See if I care.

She was probably hoping I’d kill myself by accident. It wouldn’t be the first time a stranger tried to put one over on me. I was in a taxicab once headed to a casino and the driver said, “Oh, you’re headed to the casino? You might not believe this, but I’m a psychic. If you promise to give me half of what you win, I’ll tell you where to put your money down.” I know, I know, it sounded like horseshit, but I can’t ignore anyone who claims to see the future. Like, if, instead of her floating feather crap, that medicine woman had told me I would someday be impaled by a flying candy cane, I swear I’d have been looking over my shoulder every Christmas. It all goes back to the big flood. A girl even younger than me ran all over school telling everyone to tie a boat to a tree and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. It wasn’t even supposed to rain that night, and the next day half the town was standing on their rooftops.

So I said to the cabbie, “All right, fine,” and he said, “Twenty-six.” I went in and put down every cent I had on the number twenty-six, and I couldn’t believe it, I won six hundred dollars. I
ran whooping back out to the parking lot, handed over his share, and he laughed his ass off at me, said he had nothing to lose either way so he just pulled a number out of his ass. He said, “If you’d lost, I’d have known it as soon as I saw your face. I’d have just taken off and left you standing here.” Then he snorted. “Dumb bitch. If I had the power to see winning numbers, why the hell would I be driving this cab?” I stuck my face right up to his and said, “Buddy, if you hadn’t played your little trick, I wouldn’t have three hundred dollars in my pocket, so how about you take your half and go buy a whore to listen to this crap?”

I take another quick glance at the trees before I stand up. As I’m pulling my clothes back on, I think about how Ma had her yellow dress on all the time because she liked the way it smelled like lemons and so did I. But maybe it just seemed like it smelled like lemons because it was so yellow.

W
EST COMES HOME AT A QUARTER AFTER MIDNIGHT.
I had planned to greet him lounging naked on the sofa like Cleopatra, but he catches me while I’m rummaging around in his fridge with the cat under my arm, a piece of toast in the other hand and a smoke dangling from my lips.

“I brought you a bouquet of beers,” he says.

I kick the fridge door shut and drop the cat. “It must be our anniversary.”

“People are talking.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“Everybody wants to know how you turned out.”

I prop my cigarette on a pickle jar lid. “Were they all craning their necks to see if I had my chauffeur drop me at the tavern?” I pluck a Schooner from his outstretched hand and wipe the condensation on my blouse.

“I guess because you grew up somewhere else, they wonder if you might’ve turned yourself around. Who said you could smoke in here?”

“Trust me, I was already grown up when I left here. I got sent to go live with another family, but it wasn’t long before they passed me on to Raspberry.”

“That home for girls up in New Brunswick?”

“Home for damaged goods is more like it. Everyone in there was either a violent whore, a suicide freak or crazier than the wind.”

“I don’t think people know about you being in there.”

“Guess not. You’d know if they did, right?” I sit down on the sofa and the cat leaps up into my lap.

“So, which were you?”

“What?”

“Violent whore, suicide freak or crazy as the wind?”

“Probably all three.” I pick up my smoke, look him over as I inhale. He’s gotten handsomer since he left this morning, taller or something. “I had you pegged wrong.”

“How so?” he asks.

I chew a fingernail. “Thought you didn’t like talking.”

“I’m just getting warmed up.”

“Aren’t bartenders just supposed to listen to people?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call reaching into a broken beer fridge fifty times a night bartending.” He stretches out on the recliner and finally notices I rearranged his living room set. “Christ almighty, you’re making yourself at home, ain’t you?”

I
HANG OUT AT HIS HOUSE AGAIN THE NEXT DAY.
T
HE
paperboy tosses the
Solace River Review
into his neighbour’s driveway and I run out and grab it. There’s an article on the front page about a local woman who made a fortune selling old junk she found in her basement. I root through West’s closets to see if he has any hidden treasure, but he hasn’t got much more than a bag of rolled up nickels and a gold chain with an eagle pendant hanging off it. As I’m fixing myself a cup of tea, I notice that the photograph is missing from the shelf, the one of him with the hot redhead.

He comes home early while it’s still light out and I make spaghetti from a can with some garlic-buttered toast. We actually sit down at his little table. His chairs don’t match; one’s wooden country-style and the other’s the metal fold-up kind you find in church halls. I wonder if he ever had two matching chairs and, if so, where’d the other one go? I try to picture him getting pissed off in a poker game and cracking it over someone’s head, but he doesn’t seem the type. This morning he tripped over my purse and apologized even though I was the one who left it lying in the middle of the floor. He bent down and starting picking everything up, and when I tried to explain why I have
a rear-view mirror in there, he said it was none of his business and just tossed it in with my toothbrush.

“This is tasty,” he says between bites. He picks up his bowl so his fork can reach his mouth faster.

“This? A monkey could make this. You should get some real groceries so I can cook you a roast.”

He takes a few bills out of his pocket and tosses them across the table, which is just what I’d hoped he’d do.

“Listen,” I say, shoving the money down my sock. “I need to know things.”

“Then ask.”

“I’m not spreading my legs again until you give me some information.”

“Jesus!” He chokes on a noodle and coughs, slams his bowl down. “What the hell is the matter with you? I said ASK.”

“Who made my family leave?”

He wipes his mouth on a paper towel and scowls. “Some guys were hired to go out to the house.”

“Why?”

“Your father was running some kind of scam.”

“So? He was always running a scam.”

“I don’t know the particulars. He got himself tangled up in a dope rope. Told some rich guys he was going to triple their money. I guess he’d done it before.”

“And?”

He shovels another mouthful of food. “And he lost it. Or spent it, or whatever.”

Something hits the window and West runs to the door, opens
it and hollers out, “Did one of you little turds just throw something at my house? Well, what’s that in your hand, then? Yeah, you better run.” He comes back to the table, looks at me blankly.

“Then what?” I prod. “After he stole the money.”

He sits. “These men were out for blood, sent a posse out to the house to shake him down.”

“Where did my mother go?”

“I don’t know, and even if I did, I think I ought to be the one asking the questions.”

“Fill your boots.”

He leans back in his chair. “You say you haven’t seen anyone in your family in, what, ten years?”

“Eleven.”

“So, why now?”

“Why not?” I shrug, but it turns into a shiver. “Maybe I want to see them.”

He raises an eyebrow then leans forward again, scrapes his fork up the side of his bowl for the last bit of sauce.

I look down into my glass. “Daddy ever rob you?”

“Not really. I cut him off after he stopped paying his tab and he started sneaking beers from the backroom when I wasn’t looking. I kicked him out a few times, but he came in one day and settled up, so I told him I’d let him back in as long as he paid cash beer-for-beer. Then I shortchanged him a few times when he was drunk to even things up.”

“Well, you’ve got a bit of thief in you too, then.”

I reach over to brush the hair out of his eyes, but he pulls away, balls up his paper towel and tosses it onto his empty side plate.

“I was just getting back what’s mine. I ain’t no thief.”

The house fills with the sound of kids squealing outside and screen doors snapping up and down the street like Christmas crackers. Something hits the window again.

Jared Smoke never sat across a table from me like this. He had a mind like I don’t know what, like it was all broken up in sharp pieces flying around in his head. He didn’t like it when I looked at him too long or too hard. He had a million secrets. I get the feeling West doesn’t have a ton of those. He’s staring back at me with those copper-penny eyes and I feel a blush spread across my cheeks and start creeping down my neck. I practically crawl across the table into his lap. Within seconds his belt’s undone and we’re tangled up on the floor.