Authors: Richard Ford
She’d said she intended to bring me a book on Canada history. This was it. It had white library markings on its spine. “Medicine Hat Public Library” was stamped on top of its pages.
Building the Canadian Nation
was its title, by Mr. George Brown. We’d already discussed my going to Winnipeg to live with her son, and possibly becoming a Canadian. I’d been considering it. It would be better for me, she felt. Though I hadn’t been in Canada long—six weeks was all—and I knew almost nothing about it. I’d need to learn the basic things—the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance (if they had one), the names of the provinces and who the president was. In most ways I thought I still wouldn’t have said I liked it, since I hadn’t chosen to be here. But being a Canadian didn’t seem very different from Berner and myself saying we “lived” in any of the towns where we’d moved and gone to school, then moved away. I’d lived in Great Falls for four years and never felt I belonged in it. The length of time you stayed in a place didn’t seem to count for much.
“Just give it back to me when you’re finished,” Florence said. She stepped back into the hallway, the light making her soft, rounded features indistinct. “I didn’t mean to catch you unawares.”
“Thank you,” I said and held the book across my front. I felt like all of me was visible.
“I’ve got kids,” Florence said and waved her hand. “You’re all the same.”
She left then. I closed my door back and locked it. I could hear her weight on the stairs all the way down to the bottom.
R
EMLINGER FOUND ME IN THE LEONARD KITCHEN
, where I was waiting for Charley, so we could go out for our evening scouting. I was drinking a mug of coffee with sugar and milk, a habit I’d taken up from being cold in the truck every morning. I was dressed in my warm clothes—my L-jays, my plaid wool jacket and cap, my wool pants and my Daytons. I was already too hot in the steamy kitchen, where the stove was going. It was no bigger than a kitchen in a family’s house—with an old Servel, a wood cookstove, a rick for kindling, a table to prepare the food, and a pantry. Mrs. Gedins tolerated me because there was no other place for me to go, except to be in my room alone. But she never talked to me. She was boiling vegetables and filling tins with meat loaf for the oven. She frowned at Remlinger, as if they’d been having a row—which possibly they had.
“I want you to come with me now,” Arthur said to me. He was very intent and seemed certain about something—different from how I’d been used to seeing him. He hadn’t shaved, and his eyes looked tired. His breath had a vinegary smell. He was wearing his fancy leather jacket with the fur collar, and his brown felt fedora. He’d come in from out of doors and his cheeks were red. “We have to go on a little drive now.”
“I’m waiting for Charley.” I was sweating in my clothes. I didn’t want to go with him.
“He’s left already. I talked to him. He’ll do his scouting with the other boys.”
“Where’re we going?” I knew, or generally knew, so it wasn’t really a question. We were going to do something with the Americans, who’d no doubt made their minds up now. I was happier to stay in the kitchen, waiting for Charley. That had already become usual for me, and I liked it. But Charley wasn’t coming, and I didn’t think I had a choice.
“These two Sports are needing to talk to me,” Remlinger said, his eyes flickering. He seemed to be in a kind of motion, though he was there in the kitchen with us. He never talked to the Sports except when he circulated in the bar and the dining room. Charley did it all. “You might’ve seen them last night,” he said. He unexpectedly smiled, and turned his smile toward Mrs. Gedins, who simply gave her back to him and attended to the stove. “It’ll be good for you to go. It’ll widen your outlook. Be a part of your education. These two are Americans. You’ll learn something valuable.”
He was speaking in his declamatory way, as if other people could hear him—more than just me and Mrs. Gedins. Or as if he needed to hear himself. No one said no to him, except Florence, who could’ve kept me from having to go with just a word. She was older than he was. But she wasn’t there. Everything in the kitchen suddenly was intensified—the heat, the whirring under my ribs, the light, the bubble of boiling vegetables. I couldn’t say no just on my own.
“Are these the two men from Detroit?” I said.
Remlinger cocked his head to the side and looked down at me, his smile vanishing, as if I’d uttered something surprising. I hadn’t revealed anything I shouldn’t have. I’d been present when the Americans arrived and knew what I knew from that. But he didn’t know it. It seemed to alarm him. He looked at me strangely. I’d only wanted to have something to say.
“What do you know about it?” he said. “Who did you hear from?”
“He vas dere ven dey got here,” Mrs. Gedins said, her back to us. “He heered dem.” She was stirring a pot.
“Is that right?” Remlinger pushed himself up very straight and set his handsome head back, as if that would elicit the truth. “Vas you dere?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Vell,” Remlinger said. He gave a look at Mrs. Gedins’ back. “If you zay zo.”
“I have to use the bathroom,” I said. I’d become extremely nervous all in one instant.
“Use it, then,” Arthur said, stepping past me. “I’ll meet you in the lot. The car’s running. Hurry up.”
He went out the back kitchen door, letting in the cold, and slammed it closed, leaving me in silence with Mrs. Gedins, who didn’t say another word.
I DID NOT NEED
to use the bathroom. I needed to think something clearly, which I’d suddenly found I couldn’t do in Remlinger’s presence. I’d had plenty of time since the day before to route everything through my mind, and observe the things I needed to know, and be satisfied with not knowing all that was true, and to feel that probably not the worst was, and that in all likelihood nothing bad was going to happen because of the two Americans. “Our most profound experiences are physical events” was a saying my father often pronounced when my mother, or when Berner or I, was tortured by something we were worried about. I always took it as true—although I hadn’t known precisely what it meant. But it had become part of my sense of being normal to believe that physical events, important ones that changed lives and the course of destiny, were actually rare, and almost never happened. My parents’ arrest, as terrible as it had been, proved that—in comparison to my life before, where there had been very little physical activity, just waiting and anticipating. And in spite of believing what my father said about the importance of physical events, I’d come to think that what mattered more (this was my child’s protected belief) was how you felt about things; what you assumed; what you thought and feared and remembered. That was what life mostly was to me—events that went on in my brain. This wasn’t so strange, given the recent weeks—being alone, in Canada, without a future to act on.
Therefore, I’d tried to make my thinking in the last day be the force that determined what would happen—as a result of the Americans’ arrival—and to believe the result would be nothing at all. I’d thought, for instance, that because Arthur had been expecting “these two” (he now called them) and knew about them in exaggerated detail—their names and ages, the car they drove, the fact that they were armed but not much committed to their mission—that he would be in complete control of the situation and could make it end the way he wanted. I’d also believed the Americans would never be able to determine anything important about him—not from only looking at him. Murder wasn’t written on his face, or on anyone’s. I’d considered how it might be possible to approach a total stranger on the subject of that stranger’s being a murderer, and had decided it would be very difficult. Which was what the Americans had undoubtedly been realizing when I eavesdropped on them in the dining room. It seemed to me that the Americans would act toward Remlinger in a way that was consistent with their natures. Uncomplicated. Sincere. Goodwilled. They would need to address him, exert their reasoning on him, explain their conclusions, present a plan—after which Remlinger would deny knowing anything, tell them they were completely mistaken, which was what “the interests” back in America believed was the right thing to say. In that way everything would be settled. Whether they believed Remlinger or didn’t, the Americans would be forced to accept his denial and—again, consistent with their characters and the small enthusiasm they felt—go home to Detroit. What else could they do? They weren’t the kind of men to shoot him. Possibly they would go goose hunting with Charley and me in the morning.
I had even thought of how the Americans might approach Remlinger (since he wouldn’t approach them). A word with him in passing in the hotel lobby; an approach by Jepps as Remlinger walked out to his car. “Can we two have a private talk with you? We have something to tell you.” (Or “ask you,” or “ask about.”) As if the two of them were arranging for a girl to visit their shack, or to know more about the gambling. Arthur would’ve been confident, evasive. “Not in my rooms. In your place. In the Overflow House. We can have privacy.”
I had thought it all through—the force of thought working against physical events. But now, it seemed, physical events were beginning to take place. Whether my thoughts were accurate or not was no longer worth asking. My father, it seemed to me, had been right.
I looked down through the second-floor bathroom window, my chest still whirring. In the parking lot, in a swirl of wet flakes and rain falling together, Remlinger stood beside his Buick, its headlights shining, the wipers flopping, the engine spewing white smoke into the night. He was speaking to a man I’d never seen—a tall thin man wearing a wool cap and a tan windbreaker and street shoes, hugging his shoulders as if he was cold. The man’s cap caught the snow the wind was driving. Remlinger was talking seriously to him, his left arm sweeping first toward the Leonard, then in the direction of the highway toward Partreau, as if he was giving instructions. They didn’t look up at me. At a certain point, Arthur put a hand on the tall man’s shoulder—the man seemed to me to be in his thirties and was Arthur’s height, but thinner—and pointed with his other hand again toward the highway. Both of them were nodding. I assumed it had to do with the Americans we were going to talk to.
Which made me wonder why I had to be involved, why Remlinger would take me, and what my being a part of it—a point of reference, Charley had said—could mean. Remlinger, just at that moment, turned and frowned up at the bathroom window. The big flakes and cold rain vanished for that instant, like a hole in the storm, and revealed me. His mouth began moving, saying something that seemed angry. He made a wide hailing gesture with his arm—a signal to me that was unusual for him—then said something else to the man in the cap, who looked up at me but made no gesture, then turned and began walking away across the lot into the dark. Whatever I should’ve been paying attention to for weeks and had ignored was shouting at me. I wished Florence would arrive. I wished I’d taken my saved-up money, which I kept in my pillowcase, and climbed on the bus and gone far away from Fort Royal and Arthur Remlinger, the way Charley had said. I even wished I’d saved back twenty dollars from what I’d given to Berner. I felt trapped and unable to resist. I moved away from the window and started down the stairs to where Remlinger was waiting for me.
T
O SAY SOMETHING’S FOUNDED ON A LIE ISN’T REALLY
alleging very much,” Arthur said as we drove. More fat flakes were dancing in the headlights, the highway stretching out ahead like a tunnel. He was talking animatedly, as if we’d been having an exhilarating conversation. “I’m much more interested in how those lies hold up. You know?” He looked at me, his big hands with his gold ring on top of the steering wheel. I knew he intended to go on speaking. The radio’s light was on, but the sound turned down. “If they hold up for your entire life. Well. . . .” He jutted his chin forward. “What’s the difference? I can’t see one.” He looked at me again. He wanted me to agree. Under his felt hat brim his features weren’t distinct in the shadows.
“No, sir,” I said. I didn’t have to agree in my heart.
We weren’t driving as fast as customary. He seemed to want to talk, not reach Partreau.
“You can’t leave it all behind,” he continued. “Once, I thought that you could. Crossing a frontier doesn’t really change anything. You might as well go back. I would if I were you. Everybody should enjoy a second chance. I’ve certainly made some mistakes. We both have.”
I couldn’t follow what he said. I assumed I’d made mistakes because my father used to say “Man comes to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” which was about mistakes. But I didn’t know what mistakes of mine Remlinger knew about. I almost said,
I haven’t made any mistakes that you know.
But I didn’t want to be argumentative.
“Of course, it bothers me that I’ll die up here,” he said. “I will tell you that.” He was still speaking in his declamatory style. “You ask yourself, ‘What am I living for? Just to get old and die?’ ”
“I don’t know,” I said.
We passed two doe deer on the highway side, their fur and faces and eyes glistening in the blowing snow. They didn’t move when we passed, as if they didn’t see the Buick or hear it. Remlinger was still in the intent state of mind he’d been in—different from how he’d been around me up to then. It made me wonder how he felt. I hadn’t spent time thinking about how other people felt—only Berner, who always told me. He hadn’t mentioned the Americans while we were in the car. It was as if the meeting was unimportant, and there was nothing to say about it.
He looked over at me again, driving us through the blizzard. “You’re a secret agent, aren’t you?” He seemed about to smile under his hat brim, but didn’t. “You don’t speak about it, but you are.”
“I speak,” I said. “Nobody asks me anything.”
“Parrots speak, too—only out of despair,” he said. “Is that why you speak? I’m interested in you. You know that, don’t you?”