When the Saints (8 page)

I glance at a photograph of him and Bird taped to the refrigerator. Their arms are slung around each other’s shoulders, hunting rifles down at their sides. Bird looks big and solid, at least a foot taller than Jackie.

“We used to go up to the hunting cabin,” Jackie says, pointing to the photo with his bottle. “Bird shot four pheasants that day and rubbed it in my face for months. Now I tell him that was me. He don’t remember.” His smile fades and he takes a long swallow of beer. “You seen him?”

“Yesterday,” I say.

He doesn’t say any more. Kim brushes some highlights in my hair, talks to me about her Labrador retrievers while they’re developing. Then she leads me to the sink, rinses it all out and fluffs my hair with her fingers as she blow-dries.

“Tabby!” Jackie whistles. “You look like a supermodel.”

I go look in the bathroom mirror, come back smiling. “Holy shit, Kim, how can I thank you?”

She unclips the plastic bag from my shoulders and gathers up her supplies. “See that sawed-off turd over there in the work-boots?” She points to a snaggle-toothed kid drinking out of a mug that says SEX IS BETTER THAN GRASS IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT PUSHER. “Don’t let him near me.”

She heads for the deck and, sure enough, he’s hot on her heels. I tap his shoulder, introduce myself, and for the next two hours get the long version of his whole life story. His last name’s Miller and since everybody calls his older brother Miller, he got stuck with Miller Lite. He’s the only game hawker in the Maritimes, training his falcon eight hours a day and getting paid zero dollars and zero cents for all his hard work. I feign interest as he shows me all his claw marks and peck scars. Secretly, I’m staring at the reflection of my new hairstyle in every available surface, including the metal toaster.

“So, anyways,” Miller Lite says, reapplying the Band-Aid he pulled back to show me his infected neck gouge. “You should come over sometime and see my bird.” He plucks a badly rolled joint from behind his ear and lights the wrong end.

Jackie overhears on his way to take a leak. He thumps Miller Lite on the back and says, “Sorry, man, my sister’s only interested in seeing guys’ dicks if they’re over three inches.”

“Aw, fuck’s sakes, Jackie,” Miller Lite says, coughing out billows of smoke. “Why you got to tell everybody everything for?”

J
ACKIE NAVIGATES THE WAY TO BLUEBELLES. HE RECOG
nized the address. He says his friends call it Blue Balls because married men go there after work to watch the dancers before driving home to their homely wives.

“Course, you can buy some relief in the backroom,” he says, twisting his cap in his hands.

“So, who’s Lyle Kenzie?”

Jackie sticks his hat back on his head. “Just some fat fucking loser who can’t even be an alcoholic right.”

“There’s a right way?”

“You don’t get drunk on every kind of booze there is. You pick one staple. I seen that guy one time with a rum and eggnog sprinkled with fucking nutmeg, sipping it out of a cinnamon stick.”

“Who is he to Poppy?”

“I don’t know. She got herself mixed up in that skid soup down at the autobody shop. Probably buys drugs off him.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

He traces his finger in the dust on the dashboard. “Been about three months. She says she’s fine, but she ain’t. I’ve given up on her, tell you the truth. Ma watches them kids and they seem like they’re doing all right. I help out some, and Poppy sends money when she’s been gone a while.”

“Not this time.”

“Well.” Jackie sits up straighter. “Jewell won at bingo last week. I’ll borrow some if I have to.”

“How’d you nab a good girl like Jewell?”

“She’s from Fiddle Bay, came up to Jubilant to see her cousin.
I was driving by and seen this tight denim ass walking into the bar, ran in after it.”

“Well, there’s a heartwarming bedtime story for the baby.”

“By the time she found out I was bad news, we’d already soaked the sheets a few times. It was too late then, she was hooked. But I ain’t telling my baby boy none of that.”

“How do you know it’s a boy?”

“Every one of them has a pecker so far. Bad little fuckers, but some good-looking. There’s only three of them, by the way. Kim was just putting you on.”

“Three different mothers, I suppose.”

“Carla, Chrissie, Cora Lee—the three Cs. All batshit crazy.”

A house appears between the trees. The family who lives there is sitting out in lawn chairs facing the road instead of the sunset on the lake behind them. I wish I was one of them, all settled in with a lapdog and a Corona. One of them points at the truck and I imagine they’re playing a game, trying to guess where people are going. I wonder if it would occur to anyone we’re a long-lost brother-sister duo trying to track down a missing hooker.

“It’s time I got a real job,” I say out loud.

“You never had a job?”

“I spent four years in Raspberry. No one hires juvenile delinquents who don’t even have a social insurance number.”

“What?” Jackie turns. “I thought you moved to easy street.”

I shake my head no and he keeps staring. When we were kids, the older sister of one of Jackie’s friends got sent to Raspberry. Cher was a typical small-town bad girl, too cool for school but not so tough you wouldn’t bum a light off her and slip it in your
pocket. When she came back months later, she’d shaved the words FUCK OFF into one side of her head and choked out her boyfriend with his belt when she found out he’d cheated.

“I’ve worked before,” I say. “Just not for a paycheque. I cleaned motel rooms, harvested pot, was a tattoo guinea pig, things like that. One summer, the Tilt-A-Whirl operator at the Bill Lynch Show used to let me take over for him when he went to jerk off. He only paid me in ride tickets, but he’d give me a whole whack. I’d go out to the parking lot and sell them half price.”

“Tabby, what in God’s name is a tattoo guinea pig?”

“Some guy was starting up a tattoo business and he used me to test out different inks and designs. I got a few on my ass that I’m trying to hide from West.”

“West? That the bartender?”

“Yeah.”

Jackie looks at me, shakes his head and snorts. “Jesus Christ. You know you can’t put any of that on a resumé, right?”

“Oh, come on. I don’t have to get specific. I’ll say I’ve been a canine handler, a gardener, a carnival relief worker and an artist’s assistant. They want my resumé, I’ll bend over.”

“Carnival relief worker.” He grins. “I think I missed you a whole lot.”

The sun dives behind the trees and the clouds start to roll themselves into in a giant ball. In the half-light, the two-lane highway shimmers.

“Look at that,” I say, pointing. “So pretty.”

Jackie squints ahead. “That’s busted glass. From drunk-driving idiots.”

“Oh.”

He taps his knuckles on the windowpane then sighs and takes a bag of chewing tobacco out of his pocket. “Don’t tell Jewell. This shit was supposed to help me quit smoking. Now I can’t stop.” He paws in the bag and scoops a bit under his lip.

We drive on in silence while I debate how to bring up Daddy.

“So, what was it like at home after I left?”

“Same as when you were around. Except Daddy got even meaner and Ma got harder with him. They were fighting all the time and we just scattered. We’d come home to eat sometimes, but we were each of us hatching escape plans. Bird and I started working construction when I was fifteen. Poppy had older boyfriends she’d crash with. Eventually Daddy pissed off the wrong side of the dock. He had a line on some grade A dope, convinced a few businessmen to give him a fuckload of money, bought as much as he could, then sold it to a skipper headed to the States. He skimmed so much money off the top there was no way he was getting away with it. He gave them back even less money than they’d put up, the moron. Next day, a gang showed up at the house with knives, axes, you name it. Daddy took off and they went after him, told Ma they’d be back for the rest of us. She was afraid if she called the police, they might find something of Daddy’s in the house to pin on her and she’d wind up in jail with no way to keep after us. So she phoned that old friend of hers, Bev, and got her to come pack us in her car and bring us to Jubilant. Bev dropped us at the Salvation Army and told Ma to lose her number. After a few months, we got enough money together to buy that trailer. Bird and I used to hitchhike back and
forth to sneak Ma’s things out of the house and bring them to her. We did that for years.”

“What happened to all the money?”

“Fucked if I know. You know Daddy can’t hang on to a dollar to save his life. He probably blew it all in a week.”

I ponder it. “You should have saved Ma’s good dress.”

“What?”

“Her yellow dress. It’s still hanging in the closet.”

“You went in there? It ain’t safe, Tabby. The floor’s ready to cave.”

“It was like you all evaporated.”

“Spooked you, did it?”

“It takes a hell of a lot more than that.”

The marquee appears ahead: KLASSY LADYS, $6. Behind it, on the facade of the blue warehouse, is a painted silhouette of a busty woman bending at the waist with her hands on her hips. She’s naked except for a bonnet tied around her neck.

“Why the bonnet?”

Jackie looks up at it and shrugs. He finds an empty coffee cup on the floor and spits into it. “Why not, I guess.”

A soft rain is now falling on the thirty or so cars in the lot. We park, and when we walk in, a few men whip around to make sure I’m not married to any of them. The stools and walls are painted neon blue and there’s a permeating stench of vomit. The woman dancing around the pole isn’t even trying not to look pissed off about it. We seat ourselves in the corner and wait for a server. After five minutes, a woman in fringed leather underpants struts over with a tray. She sprays our vinyl tablecloth and wipes off the red wine ring left by the last customer.

“Evening, madam.” Jackie tilts his hat back. “We’ll take two glasses of your finest vintage.”

She snaps two beers open and parks them in front of us. “Anything else?”

“Poppy Saint working tonight?”

“No.”

“She around lately?”

“No.”

“You know where she’s at?” He’s doing a bad job of looking casual, tapping his foot like crazy.

“He’s her brother,” I interrupt, “not some jealous boyfriend. She’s got a sick kid she needs to know about.”

She hesitates. “We ain’t allowed to tell customers nothing about the dancers.”

“We just want to know what nights she dances.”

“She ain’t danced here in a while.”

“Then she’s not a dancer.”

Jackie looks up at her from under his long lashes. “You got kids?”

She drops her shoulders. “Poppy’s here on weekends. But you ask anyone about it, they’ll say she don’t work here no more.”

She walks off and Jackie examines his bottle to see if anything’s floating in it. “Now what?”

“I guess we come this weekend and you go into the backroom.”

“Fuck that.” He almost drops his beer. “All I need is one person to see me go back there and half of Jubilant will know it. Jewell will go mental.”

I chew a fingernail, thinking. “We’ll bring Ma with us, get her to vouch for you.”

“Fine.” He pushes his bottle away. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”

I drain half my beer and we walk back into the drizzle, inhaling the fresh sea air. I wait till we’re back on the road before I say, “Ma says you’re staying out of trouble for a reason.”

“What does that mean?”

“You tell me.”

The rain starts whipping in sheets and the windshield wipers don’t work right. I have to pull over twice because I can’t see two feet in front of us. Jackie doesn’t say a word to me, just sits there staring straight ahead. When I finally drop him off, he leaps out of the truck then turns around and holds the door open, letting in the rain.

“Tabby, I’m staying out of trouble because I got kids that are starting to copy everything I do.” He drums his palms on the roof. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He shuts the door without making eye contact, and I watch him walk across the wet grass with his hands in his pockets. Even the back of his neck looks guilty.

J
ANIS CAN’T GET OVER MY NEW HAIR.
S
HE STRETCHES
out on the carpet with her arms folded under her head and says, “You look just like a beauty pageant runner-up.”

“Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be second-best.”

“Now hold on.” She tilts her sunglasses down on her nose. “Runner-up means the best.”

“Runner-up means second-best.”

“No, it’s the winner, because you run-her-up to get her crown. This girl at my church group is always talking about how her dog was the runner-up at the dog show. Her mother must have gave that judge a hundred bucks, because that dumb dog is always barking his head off and his fur is all mashed up like this.” She whisks her hands through Swimmer’s hair until it stands up in all different directions.

Swimmer points at me. “Lello.”

“
Yellow,
Swimmer.” Janis grabs his ears and yanks his face up close to hers. Her head looks tiny in comparison. “Y-E-L-O!” She lets go and he falls over backward. “He likes blondies,” she says to me. “He got a big dirty crush on Dolly Pardon and we have to listen to Kenny and Dolly’s Christmas record even when it’s summer out.”

“Dolly Parton,” I correct.

“Yup. Dolly Pardon.”

Swimmer starts singing a version of “With Bells On,” adding in jazz hands and fancy kicks. Janis covers her ears and rolls under the sofa.

A
FTER SUPPER, MA AND I PUT THE KIDS IN THE CAR AND
drive to Jackie’s place. When we walk in, Jewell’s got a bucket
of crayons and large pieces of paper laid out on the table. She’s frying up grilled cheese sandwiches and pressing them into heart shapes with a cookie cutter.

“Where’s everybody going?” Janis asks, keeping her coat on.

“Bingo,” Ma tells her. “Auntie Jewell’s going to look after you.”

“Hey, Janis the Menace,” Jewell says, opening the freezer. “Jackie bought you some of that bubble gum ice cream that rots your teeth. Come have a look.”