Live it Again (6 page)

They took Colonel home and placed him in
the work shed with a wool blanket wrapped around his body. Hugh’s mom said he
needed rest and would be fine, but she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye
when she’d spoken. Colonel was in the same spot when he returned home from
school. He hadn’t moved an inch. The dish of treats Hugh had left in the
morning sat next to him untouched.

“He’s not in any pain,” his father had
tried reassuring him.

“But he’s still cold,” Hugh said, gently
stroking the dog’s head. “Can’t we give him another blanket?”

“Wouldn’t do any good at this point. A
dozen more blankets wouldn’t make a difference. He needs rest more than
anything.” He’d taken his son’s hand and started to lead him out of the shed. He’d
resisted and looked back at Colonel one last time. Hugh knew in that moment it
would take more than rest. He saw tired suffering in those unblinking, wet
eyes. The long snout turned toward him, and Hugh saw something else there too. The
dog was grateful to be alive; he loved the entire Nance family for saving him
and caring for him. He would give it his all to make it through the night for
them. Thank you his kind, old face said.
Thank you.

The next morning Hugh had come downstairs
and asked his mother how Colonel was. She shook her head. “I’m sorry
sweetheart.”

It was the longest walk of his life across
the front yard to the work shed. He’d paused at the door, hesitant to go any
further. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want it to be fact. He remembered
thinking that once he stepped through, the innocence and safety of childhood
would evaporate in an instant.

He went through the door anyway, and he had
been right.

Colonel was still there, as he’d been the
entire day and evening before, but he was no longer panting. It was so still
and quiet in there that morning. Hugh looked at the lifeless, glassy brown
eyes.

“No,” was all he’d said. No goodbyes, no I
love you, just no. He shut the shed door and went back to the house.

His parents said it would be alright if he
stayed home from school that day, but Hugh had insisted on going. He couldn’t
bear to stay on the farm all day knowing his old friend had gone so far away and
was still so close by.

He went to school and buried his nose into
the work assignments for a change. He listened to his grade four teacher as she
read a chapter from
Watership Down
. He did his math and he paid
attention during history lessons. At noon hour, he volunteered to be goalie
during a soccer game put together by his friends, and he thought he might
actually get the through the rest of the day without shedding a single tear.

When the game was at the far end of the field,
Hugh had a few minutes to himself. It had been the first significant amount of
time he’d been alone all day. That’s when he’d broken down. He’d never cried
harder in his life. His eyes gushed and his nose ran with warm snot. When the
soccer ball slammed into his face he wasn’t even sure what it was, nor had he
cared. He’d just bawled harder. Some of the kids laughed, but when he finally
told them the whole story, they’d all crowded around him to offer support and
condolences.

Even Scott Harder, the one that kicked the
ball in his face, had patted him on the back. “Sorry about that pal, it’s hard
losing a pet.”

“No kidding,” he’d said.

That wouldn’t happen for another ten months,
Hugh thought, as he stroked Colonel’s floppy ear. The dog licked his palm and
ran back to fir tree, barking all the way. Hugh stood up, put his hands in his
pockets, and watched the dog for a while longer. “It doesn’t have to happen to
you this time,” he said quietly. “Not to you, not to Billy Parton…not to Ben.”

He looked around and saw the farm as it had
been, how it was again. The house, the work shed, the three-stall horse barn to
the north and the two old grain bins next to them. None of these buildings had
made into the next century. There were more trees on the 1974 Nance homestead as
well. More spruce and poplar, every inch between seemingly filled with flowering
caragana and lilac bush.

He heard his mother call from the house. “Get
back in here and clean your room! No supper until you do!”

He headed for the back porch and remembered
something the voice in the brown had said.

You can try again.

Colonel, Billy, Ben…and even Mr. McDonald.

I’ll do a lot more than try.

Supper was wonderful, just as he knew it
would be. Nothing beat his mom’s overdone meatloaf and under-steamed garden
fresh vegetables. Hugh washed it down with two glasses of milk and watched his
family. Donald no longer lived at home, but he showed up for meals anyway, just
like Colonel. He spouted off about the inferior class of people that lived in
Braedon and the surrounding municipalities. To Donald, if you weren’t of
English-Scottish descent, you were automatically in a lower class. Hugh never
understood where his oldest brother had picked up the racism. Their parents
were the most tolerant people he’d ever known. Heather argued with Donald while
their mom served lemon meringue pie. Gordo flicked chunks of macaroni off his
spoon into Hugh’s face from across the table.

Just another family meal at the Nance
house.

Hugh loved it. “Hey mom, are you going to
make coffee?” It seemed like a reasonable request.

“Yeah, and I’ll have a shot of vodka,”
Gordo added.

Mom rolled her eyes. Donald laughed and
pushed away from the table. It was a good time for him to leave. He was losing
his argument with Heather. “What’s a little fart like you need coffee for?”
Donald was unusually fat for a Nance, two-hundred-fifty pounds, six-foot-tall
kind of fat. He referred to it as ‘burly big’. His younger brothers called him
Humpty-Dumpty-Donald behind his back, wide and round in the middle, bald on top
with a bit of red hair still clinging to the back and sides. He looked
forty-five instead of twenty-five, a sweaty, pink-faced heart attack waiting to
happen.

He looks exactly the same in the future.
What’s his secret?

Hugh shrugged his shoulders and grinned
sheepishly. “It was worth a try.” He’d slipped again, but it hadn’t been too
bad.

The other kids cleared out after Donald, Heather
helped her mother clean up, and Gordo bolted for the living room to watch
television. Hugh followed and watched him switch between the three stations
they received on the twenty inch set. The wood cabinet surrounding the glass
screen was about the size of the kitchen stove. He settled for channel eleven,
a repeat of the Brady Bunch. “Why don’t we go back in the kitchen and help mom
out?” Hugh asked, sitting at the far end of the couch Gordo had already
stretched out on.

“Go and help them yourself, fag.”

Fag was a popular insult back in those
days. If you wanted to wash dishes or take figure skating lessons, you were
considered a fag. If you wanted to chop wood or feed livestock, you were still
a fag according to Gordo. If your name was Hugh, you were definitely a fag.

“Well you’re an asshole.” He started back
for the kitchen, but Gordo wrestled him to the floor and started to slap his
face repeatedly. Hugh tried swatting back, but found it difficult just
deflecting the stronger boys hits.

I should be able to throw this little
shit through the wall.

If he still had his adult body it wouldn’t
have been a problem. Instead, he resorted to the only other option available to
him, the one he’d used a million times growing up.

“
MOM!
”

Gordo jumped off and flung himself back on
the couch before she got to the living room. She gave them both a warning look
and left.

Gordo glared at him. “Call me that again
and I’ll tell her you skipped school today.”

Hugh was tempted to call him something
worse, but decided to keep his mouth shut. He went to the bathroom and splashed
his red face with water. Whenever he got this pissed off he would have a
cigarette. He needed a cigarette now.

You don’t need a cigarette, he told the
dripping-wet face in the mirror. You won’t even start smoking for another four
or five years.

But he wanted a cigarette
now
, and
he was going to have a cigarette
now
. He went to his parent’s bedroom
and started digging through his dad’s top dresser drawer. The old man smoked
like a chimney. He had tobacco stashes all over the place.

Hugh found a half pack of menthols in the
second drawer.

If his dad discovered them missing he would
undoubtedly blame Gordo. That would be just fine with Hugh. He tucked them
under the front of his pants, sucked in his little gut, and left the house. Halfway
across the backyard he remembered he didn’t have anything to light them with.

“Shit.” He started for the work shed. There
was bound to be a supply of matches near the woodstove. It was funny what you
could remember after so long.

I can’t even remember if I said goodbye
to my kids on the morning of the day I died, but I can recall where my old man’s
smokes and matches were hidden decades earlier.

He caught sight of his mother looking at
him through the kitchen window. Hugh was sure she knew what he was setting out
to do. He hesitated, ready to go back to the house and return the cigarettes. Colonel
barked from around the house. His mother smiled from behind the glass and waved.
He waved back and continued on for the shed, Colonel caught sight of him and
followed.

The dark little shop held no appeal for
him, even after all this time. It smelled of tractor grease mixed with damp
sawdust, and unless the little pot-bellied woodstove was burning it was always
uncomfortably chilly. It was cluttered with tools, and workhorses, and table
saws. It reminded him too much of hard work. He found a book of matches in a
drawer filled with bolts and tape measures and left the little building behind,
calling for Colonel to follow. They headed west down a narrow path through the
shelterbelt of trees toward the dugout. Hugh found a good spot to sit among a
pile of field-picked stones at the edge of the water. He pulled the cigarettes
out and smiled at his old friend. “Don’t you go telling me I’m too young to
smoke, boy.”

He struck a match and a piece of igniting
sulfur jumped onto the back of his hand.

“For
fuck’s
sake!” He dropped the
match into the rocks beneath his feet. He swatted the burning ember from his
skin and struck another one. “Is someone trying to tell me something?”

He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. Colonel
jumped up as he began to cough. His tail wagged with concern as Hugh tried to
catch his breath. “I’m okay,” he gasped and started to hack again. It felt as
if he’d swallowed a sock. That’s exactly how it was the first time he’d tried.

This is the first time I tried.

He took another drag with the same result
and waited for the familiar buzz he knew would follow as the nicotine flooded
through his bloodstream. It never came. He spit out a mouthful of rancid
tasting saliva and tried another puff, then another, and then another. He felt
like choking on each one.

He finally gave up and squished the
half-smoked butt between his shoe and a rock. He wiped tears from his eyes and
breathed a few times until the urge to vomit passed. “Well that was a blast,
can’t wait for the next one.” He tucked the pack under a flat stone along with
the matches. The sky was clear and it didn’t look like it was going to rain
anytime soon. They were safe out here, better than keeping them in the house.

The two worked their way around the south
side of the shelterbelt. His father had been one of the last growers in the
area to resist clearing the land of most of its forest. Hugh studied the lay of
the land and remembered all the great hiding spots and secret clearings inside
the multitude of bluffs and bushes. A breeze from the northwest ruffled his
hair, carrying with it the faint smell of horse manure and wild grass being
burned off in a distant field. He could hardly wait for autumn, to watch the
leaves change color, the exhilaration he’d feel when the first snow fell. The
whole family would go ice-skating on the dugout.

He scratched Colonel behind one ear. “It’s not
that much different in 2011. I don’t know what’s so exciting about it now.” The
dog looked up at him lovingly. “Is it because I’m ten again?”

The southwest sky was brilliant orange on
the horizon, fading to purple above, and framed in a navy blue that was spotted
with the evening’s first dim stars, a picture-perfect prairie sunset. He
watched as a jet plane high above and forever away plunged into the brightness,
leaving behind a grey, billowing trail. Hugh could hear the distant echo of its
rumbling engines chasing after the falling day. He’d loved to watch them
disappear into the distance. He sometimes imagined he was on one of them, bound
for an exciting new life in some far off, exotic land. Hugh never once travelled
on a plane. He never accomplished anything that would change the world. He
remained in Braedon, or at least very close to it his entire life.

So I never amounted to very much…big
deal. Should’ve been happy with what I had.

He wished Cathy were with him now to see
how it had been when he was a kid. She’d had it pretty rough growing up; her
step-father had been an abusive alcoholic. He’d terrorized Cathy and beaten her
mother regularly. Hugh’s family never had much money, but they had a stable
family life, parents that always loved them. Cathy had told him more than once
how much she envied him for that.

“I wish the kids could’ve seen it too.”

Colonel was zigzagging through the stalks
of wheat, his long nose sniffing out field mice. Hugh had rented the land out
in the nineties; almost all of the forest had been cleared. It hadn’t put any
more money in his pockets. He should’ve left it alone.

I should’ve left it like this
.

He whistled loudly and waited for Colonel
to return before walking back to the house. Gordo and Heather were watching
television, the high pitched voice of Don Adams as
Agent 86
blared
through the set’s single, tinny speaker.
Get Smart
was a Nance family
favorite. Fred lay curled up in his dad’s reading chair next to the stone
fireplace. The cat was rarely seen when his father was home; the two hated each
other, and the only time their paths crossed usually resulted with Fred being
booted across the room.

Hugh wandered into the kitchen and sat next
to his mom. For a second he was worried he might smell like cigarette smoke,
but she didn’t seem to notice. Her attention was focused on a crossword puzzle in
the Braedon paper.

“Why do you work so damned hard, mom?”

She took off her reading glasses and gave
his hand a light smack. “Why do you have to curse like that? Is that the
cool
way your friends talk?” She smiled and considered his question for a moment
longer. “Why wouldn’t I work hard? Your father works hard, so does your sister.
This place doesn’t run itself you know.”

Hugh felt guilty. She hadn’t mentioned any
of the boy’s names. “I can help out more around here if you like. What could
you get me to do?”

She looked at him as if he were a stranger.
The smile was still there though. “Well for starters you can keep your room
tidy and make your own bed in the morning. You can also begin gathering eggs
from the chickens every evening. How does that sound?”

“I can handle that,” he said. It would give
him a good excuse to have a nightly smoke.

Marion Nance suspected more behind his
sudden kindness. “Do you expect something in return, maybe an increase in your
allowance?”

He scratched his head and tried to remember
what his allowance had been in those days. Every Saturday his mom would give
him a handful of change to spend when the family went into town to grocery
shop. He usually ended up buying a couple of comic books and a treat of some
kind, couldn’t have been more than a dollar. He thought of the comics he couldn’t
afford that afternoon and slowly nodded his head. Yeah, an increase would be
nice now that you mention it.”

“I’ll give you three dollars each weekend
if you get those jobs done,” she said returning to her puzzle.

“Thanks mom, I’ll start tomorrow.” Maybe if
he did the chores with a smile on his face, that amount would increase. He
paused halfway out of the kitchen and turned. “I love you mom.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

Let her stew on that, he thought as he
climbed the stairs. It would make her look more closely at Gordo’s work habits
as well. His bullying brother would have to start pulling his weight more
around here, and Hugh couldn’t wait to see how much it pissed him off.

He rummaged through the stacks of clothes
in his room, throwing the dirty ones into a pile out in the hallway and folding
those that weren’t too bad on his bed. Some he recognized, most he didn’t. He
rearranged the books in his shelf and started to clean out the writing desk. He
saw the lottery newsletter again. He grabbed a pencil and underlined the
numbers for May 19.

8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36

Thirty-five million dollars in
thirty-six years.

He wrote the numbers down on a piece of
scrap paper and taped it to the corner of his Farah Fawcett poster. He took
another piece of paper and wrote the numbers down again. He shoved that piece
under the mattress. Hugh would have to remember those numbers for a long time. He
wrote out three more sets and placed them strategically throughout his room. One
went in the comic book shelf, another tucked away in the pages of a children’s
animal encyclopedia, and the last one he placed carefully beneath a tile in the
ceiling.