What They Wanted (22 page)

It took a minute for him to remember that evening in the student centre when I’d taunted him about the trunk he’d doodled, its lid tightly shut and no telling clothes trailing outside to hint at the owner’s story. When he did remember, his smile faded.

“Rocks,” he said simply. “Full of rocks. Sink a boat.” He drank the rest of his wine and laid down his glass, letting his hand rest on the table beside mine. I examined the broad, hairy width of it, ridged with veins, his knuckles chafed by weather, and resisted the urge to trace my finger along that wormy bluish vein. I looked up. He was smiling that sad smile again, his eyes filled with more uncertainty than when he’d drifted around campus with enlarged pupils, patting the rumps of dogs that weren’t there. At least then I knew his hallucination. This new incertitude baffled me. And I hated that sad smile; it reminded me of Father’s the last time he motored from the shores of Cooney Arm, looking back upon his stage, his flakes, and all those things reverent to his heart that he’d been forced to leave.

“Heard from Pabs? Still weaving with his pencil I hope?”

I smiled. “Yeah, he’s always at it.”

“Yeah, he’s amazing.”

“Thought you were good, too.”

“I was just playing around.”

“But still, you were good.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the one grading me bad?
Exact
. Too
exact
. Weren’t they your words? Destroyed me, I think.” He shook his head. “Man, he can draw. I remember studying him—those times we hung on that wharf, sketching. I was always trying to figure him out, how he saw things, drew things. It was like if I could figure it, I could have it too.” His tone turned pensive. “Think my whole life’s been like that, trailing behind others, taking on their ways.”

I looked at him with surprise. “How do you get that? You were always the main attraction.”

His face softened onto mine. “Only you saw it that way,” he said gently. “Actually, it was the pot I kept feeding everyone— for a price—that was the main attraction. Helped pay the bills, but—” He pulled a face. “Let’s stick with you, more interesting. Ran across you in the library once, going through Descartes’s meditations like a miner with a pick. What got you onto philosophy, anyway?”

He was pulling bills out of his pocket and laying them on the table for the waitress. I picked up my gloves, reluctant for the evening to end. “Sorry about rushing,” he said apologetically, “but it’s a two-hour drive to the rig.”

“You’re driving tonight?”

“Yep. Philosophy. You were telling me, why philosophy.”

“I dunno. Curious to know where babies come from— before the womb and after death. What about your engineering—did you—did you ever finish? And what about Trapp—you never mention him.”

“Trapp’s been better. And I did finish the engineering. So— where babies come from—before the womb. What got you thinking about that?”

We’d left the restaurant and now he was taking my arm and leading me down the icy sidewalk. He was a head taller than me, but it felt like more than that as he crunched a path in his chunky, steel-toed boots through the banked snow towards my car. Holding on to his arm, I told the story I always told whenever I was asked: about Mother’s three little dears sleeping in the graveyard, and how I’d thought them romantic creatures, like angels, but how that notion was dispelled when I played dead myself once, nearly frightening poor Mother to death.

Ben listened quietly, thin flakes of snow glinting on his dark curls as we paused within the umbrella of light thrown off by a street lamp.

“And that’s it really,” I ended. Then, prodded by his silence, I added a few other things, things I hadn’t told anyone, about how I understood—in that moment of Mother’s fright—what Gran’s flowery language had tried to tell me: that the little dears had been real babies with fingers and eyes like mine, buried now beneath the ground in coffins that held nothing of the flowers and sunshine that covered them but were worm-ridden and dark and cold.

“Despite Gran’s assurances,” I went on, “that the dead rise from their graves and take on the wings of angels, I was never so sure. Why, then, was my mother still planting flowers and sitting by the graves if there was nothing down there? Truly, it was the deepest of mysteries,” I concluded with a flourish of hands. “And it still is. Don’t you think?”

He dug his hands in his pockets, a smile twisting his mouth. “And have you figured it?”

“Lord, no. It can never be figured—it’s the
figuring
part itself that intrigues me, and the numerous other mysteries it leads me to.’Course, you’re the one who likes everything defined— didn’t you say that once?”

We were standing quite close now, the snow thickening on his hair, melting on his mouth.

“Sylvie, I’ve gotten caught in something,” he said abruptly.

“Oh lord, he’s married.” I was only half joking.

He shook his head. “That would be simple,” he said dismally. “It’s just not something I can talk about right now. Do you understand?”

I didn’t, but nodded anyway. Moving past me, he used his forearm to swipe the mantle of snow off my windshield. Then he brushed the covering of snow off my shoulders and quickly, gently, pressed his mouth against my cheek. “I won’t be around for a while,” he said lowly. “Got some things to do. Perhaps we can have a drink after—a long drink, eh? Where’s your keys— get inside. Start your car—make sure she starts.”

He waited for a moment as I started the car, swiping snow from the back windshield, and then he was bounding back to the sidewalk, watching as I crunched away from the curb.

It was a few weeks later, late evening, before I saw him again. I was walking along the same sidewalk to my car. It was bitterly cold, the air white with ice crystals. Ben was walking towards a nightclub, his bared head hunched into his shoulders, the tips of his hair frosty grey. Clinging to his arm was Trapp, his feet slipping and sliding beneath him as he grinned like an irate child. Ben stopped upon seeing me, Trapp colliding against him. I stared at Trapp, a wool cap pulled down over his ears, his face bone-white beneath the neon lights of the club, ruffs of sideburns and chin hair patching his face. He slipped when he saw me, and was saved from a headlong flight by Ben holding tight to his arm, steadying him.

“Hey, how you doing?” I asked, looking at them both.

It was Trapp who responded. “Dandy, just gawd-damned dandy, and how’s Miss Sylvie?” he leered, straining to keep going.

I was taken aback, his manner highly offensive, even for Trapp.

“It’s his birthday,” said Ben, giving me an apologetic smile. “Been working straight through for a while now. Might say he’s broke out.”

I watched as he gave Trapp a push, sending him staggering ahead, and tried not to show Ben that I knew his lie. Nobody worked the rigs with facial hair, given the threat of sour gas and the need for close-fitting oxygen masks.

“Where you off to?” asked Ben. “Wanna join us for a beer?”

“Think I’ll pass,” I replied, watching Trapp tumbling to the sidewalk. A couple came out of the nightclub, stepping distastefully around Trapp, who kept slipping onto his knees as he tried to get up. Ben was instantly beside him, helping him to his feet. He looked back to me with a quiet smile, his eyes appealing for some sort of understanding as Trapp remained leaning against him for support. To spare him further effort I called out good night and went in search of my car. I looked back once, peering closer to see Ben wiping spit or puke off Trapp’s mouth with his coat sleeve, no different from a father wiping his youngster’s mouth clean of ice cream.

Throughout the rest of the week I kept seeing them, Ben dragging the staggering Trapp up one street and down another, in and out of the dance bars and pool halls. I kept a clear path, and was more embarrassed for Ben when Trapp spotted me leaving a drugstore once and heckled, “Well, if it ain’t little Miss Sylvie. How’s she going, little Miss Sylvie?”

“His birthday,” Ben mouthed apologetically, shoving Trapp’s face into the sleeve of his coat. I walked past with a flash of irritation, wondering about the poor bitch of a mother whose youngster must’ve laid half in, half out of the womb for five days straight in order to command a five-day birthday.

Ben caught up with me, his hand tightening around my arm.

“He’s—coming down hard. Sylvie—”

“What, off drugs?” I faced Ben. “What the hell’s going on with him—with you? And why the hell is he so—so
disdainful
—of me?”

“He’s not, he’s just a bit screwed up right now, he’ll get over it.”

“Get over what?”

Ben stared at me, his face closed up like a clam shell. “I won’t be around for a while,” he said quietly. “Going to a different rig in the morning. Be back in a few weeks. Perhaps we can have that drink.” He touched my arm and smiled, a deep, tender smile that would’ve sent my heart skipping beats like a faulty piston in days of yore.

“You keep in touch, buddy,” I said, and patting his hand reassuringly, carried on down the street “like I hadn’t a care in the world,” I said to Myrah later, making up my bed on the sofa, “and no more I don’t—he’s never offered anything but friendship, and I’m always drooling at the mouth—god, I’m sick to death of mooning over Ben Rice—been mooning over him all my life, it feels like.”

“He’s a tease,” cut in Myrah.

“Ohh, god, no, he’s not—he’s nothing, he’s a friend—a friend who likes me a lot and deserves more than a mooning, foolish schoolgirl every time he tips his hat or tosses a smile— that’s how he is with everybody, really friendly, and it’s just this stupid part of me that keeps thinking,
Ahh, it’s him, it’s him, he’s the one who’s gonna save me
—eh, save me from
what
, you might ask, good question.” I looked at Myrah, who was no longer listening, her curly head thrown back in the rickety armchair we’d found on the street, her eyes dazed into the shape of hearts.

“Well sir, she’s mooning,” I exclaimed.

And she was—she’d been in a state of bliss for weeks over some guy from back home who was part of a mud crew for the rigs and was spending his time off in the hotel. He swore Myrah was a Sandy Olsson lookalike, his favourite dancing girl from
Grease
. I suffered through that movie time and again whilst Myrah studied the facial tics and head tilts and hairstyles of the actress, adopting them for her own so’s to enthrall the already smitten mud-man who was beginning to hint about engagement rings. Which started my heart skipping like a faulty piston again each time some dark, curly-headed fellow entered the bar, reminding me of Ben.

“Poor bastard, good thing he don’t show up,” I whispered to Myrah one night during a love scene between Sandy and Danny Zuko, “for I’d probably be at his ankles like a Chihuahua, yapping on and on about all the grand reasons why I study philosophy, hoping to impress him—gawd, why do I keep blistering over that poor bastard?”

“Ahh, he’s just a fixture in your head is all,” said Myrah, “a habit, kick it, and why
don’t
you have a boyfriend? Never known you to have more than three or four dates with the one fellow.”

“I dunno—after a few dates, everything just wears off.”

“Then it can’t be love.”

“Whatever that is. Would probably wear off with Ben, too. Who knows. Perhaps it’s only fantasy I like—gawd, there’s a thought.”

And indeed it was a troubling thought, for looking back, the romantic prospects I’d met during the past years never felt right—least not the way I’d imagined love, or even lust, might feel. Mostly what I felt was a huge want in my heart that was never satiated, no matter how cute or clever the man. And the want was burning big these days, triggered no doubt by the reappearance of the sooty-eyed Ben. And why not, I rationalized. As the first recipient of my misguided heart, it made perfect sense that he’d always be a Pavlovian bell.

Armed with that understanding, I disallowed any further thoughts of Ben Rice. And after a few months without any sightings of either Ben or Trapp, I was once again free of those obsessive desires—till the trip home, and Chris getting me all stirred up in memory.

SEVEN

T
HE WIND DIED OUT
and the rain stopped in the quiet hours of dawn. I woke up late into morning, and late for work. Cussing and marshalling Chris through the tent flaps, I squinted through the morning sun into the swollen brown waters of the Wapiti River sliding just a few feet past the tent, smelling of drowned earth.

“Ohh, just keep going,” I muttered over Chris’s grumbling about our near drowning. A quick look around and I was dashing through the campsite, flicking my hair into a ponytail and hauling on a jean jacket, cringing from the cold, wet grass soaking through my shoes. “Chris!”I looked back impatiently as he lagged behind, staring dazedly at the dozen sagging, rain-drenched tents, their reds, yellows, and blues a crescent of colour between the muddied riverbank and the green wall of trees rising behind them. A few campers were muddling about in jeans and T-shirts, longish, unkempt hair framing sleep-worn faces as some shuffled with towels and soap to the river and others tidied up their campsite from the night’s storm. A breeze tinkled amongst the pots and pans dangling from tree hooks and bared limbs overhanging stone fireplaces, and I laughed as Chris walked into a fully strung clothesline between two trees, suffering a shower of last night’s rain down the open neck of his shirt collar.