Authors: Donna Morrissey
“A hippie camp,” he exclaimed in wonder. He shook himself off like a half-drowned pup. “Look—look at buddy,” he exclaimed, pointing to a young fellow sauntering from the woods with a roll of toilet paper in one hand, the other scratching at a mane of blond curls shimmering over his shoulders. “Jeezes, if it wouldn’t for his tits, I’d take him for a girl.”
“His name’s Jordie, and he’s gorgeous—hey, Jordie,” I called, “meet my brother.”
“Hey, man,” said Jordie.
“Hey, b’y,” replied Chris, and bolted for the car. “My sister’s a freaking hippie,” he kept repeating as we climbed inside, “my sister’s a freaking hippie.”
“Hippies retired years ago, brother. They’re just happy campers with no rooms to rent. Will you stop gawking— cripes, they’re just back-to-the-land kinda folks.”
“Wouldn’t be on my land. Chrissakes, you can’t all camp this close on a river, where’s they shitting?”
“Oh, for the love of gawd.”
“Well, wouldn’t be in my river if I owned it.”
“Chris, it’s me—I’m one of the campers. Would you run off your sister?”
“And what’s they all crowding the one spot for—cripes, the river runs for miles—say no more.” He threw up his hands in defence as I popped the clutch and faced him. “But I’ll tell you this, I’ll be hauling down that tent this evening and pitching it downriver—or upriver—wherever the frig up is around here.”
“Yeah, gonna be fun.” I backed the car along the muddied path, turning onto the highway. Least he’s looking outside of himself, I thought with consolation.
“See that?” I asked after we’d driven a few miles down the highway. “That restaurant over there, and all them shiny new trucks parked beside it? You know how many new trucks they got in this town? Everybody got a new truck in this town. Street bums got a new truck in this town. And you might too if you listens to your sister.”
He grunted.
“And you know what else they got?” I asked. “They all got brand-new stereos bouncing around in the back of them trucks. Still packed in their boxes. No place to put them. But they got them. And perhaps you will too—if—?”I threw him a look. “If
what
?” I demanded as he kept to his glumness.
“If I listens to me sister.”
I gave a stout nod. “Now, think how smart you’ll look come fall—riding home in a shiny new truck with a galvanized boat in the back and your head tucked inside a cowboy hat, strutting spurs. Man. Saltwater Cowboy.”
He smirked. “Saltwater cowboy. Yup, that’ll be me. Me and Ben. Saltwater cowboys.”
“Ben?”
“Oops. Forgot.”
“Forgot what? What’s Ben got to do with this?”
“Jeezes, can’t mention his name.”
“Ben’s not around, I keep telling you, I haven’t seen him in months—gawd, you’d think he was your best friend, the way you keep talking about him.”
“Fine, fine, can’t a fellow goof around—jeezes. So what else are they all buying with their money?”
“Nothing. They give what’s left over to their sister. Then they asks what else they can do for her.” I directed his gaze out the window. “Look about you, what do you think, pretty flat around here, huh?”
“Yeah, great place for marbles.”
“And other things. Do you know that prairie boys don’t get as seasick as Newfoundlanders travelling to the offshore oil rigs? Something to do with no horizons. Prairie boys are used to no horizons. Something else you’ll be strutting about when you goes back home—motor for hours on stormy seas and no puking. Brother, the things that’s gonna come to you—if,” I paused, and we both repeated in unison, “if I listens to me sister.”
I laughed, punching his shoulder, and he punched back, admiring the quickly greening fields cradling Grande Prairie, the smell of wet grass wafting through the car, and the huge sky, startling blue from last night’s rain.
“See that church over there, and all those buildings around it?” I said as we got into town. “Used to be a big field last summer. The town quadrupled in size overnight, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an old person strolling the sidewalks—or even a local. Throngs of young people is mostly what you see—all from back east. The only Albertans I’ve met are the bartender I work with and the guy who owns the corner store where I used to buy milk.”
“What do they think of us all crowding in like this?”
“Bums and creeps, according to the politicians. Don’t know about the common folk, can’t say we’re not good for business. Pretty town, eh? Nicely laid out, clean and quiet for the most part—if you look past the construction sites. Hotels and houses springing up like mushrooms. Been bit of a downturn lately. But it’ll turn around.”
He gazed at the storefronts and restaurants as I found parking in front of the saloon-style bar where I worked. Getting out of the car, I dug a handful of change from my purse and ladled it into his hand as he stood looking about. “Call Gran,” I said. “There’s a pay phone inside the bar—hey, where you going?” He’d pocketed the money and was starting up the sidewalk.
“Having a look around, see you in a bit.”
“But, wait—call Gran first.”
“I’ll call up here—seen a pay phone.”
“But I wanna talk too—Chris! Oh, bugger him,” I grunted impatiently as he disappeared behind a feisty group of men bailing out of a truck and piling towards the bar. I followed them in, catching a last glimpse of Chris cutting across the street and heading between two buildings, looking for all the world as if he knew where he was going.
The air was already thick with smoke inside the bar, and with its crowded tables and babble of voices, not too unlike the one we’d left the night before in Hampden. Till you looked closer and saw that there weren’t any women, only men: hard drinking, hard talking, darkly clad men with big rough hands and weathered faces. They were all wearing muddied, steel-toed boots and on their heads varied-coloured caps with their company logo barely discernible through ingrained dirt. Truckers, rig hands, service men—all ages. My eyes lingered on the younger ones like Chris. Some I knew from working the bar, but I felt I knew them all, their smooth, eager faces and soft hands masked behind false swaggers as they guzzled back beer, trying to keep stride with their elders. And with the amount of practice they were getting they were seasoning pretty fast. But it wasn’t all for show. With the minus-forty winds freezing their faces the past winter, they’d been guzzling as much for warmth, especially those hellish evenings working past dark. Many nights they’d walked stiff as pickets into the bar, clawing ice off their mouths and eyebrows. I could still smell it now, like stale beer, the ice melting from their faces and dripping onto the radiators as they huddled over them for a blast of heat, lips too stiff to form words, swigging back whisky (when they thought I wasn’t looking) from mickeys jammed in their back pockets.
After strapping on my change apron, I leaned across the bar and tapped my serving tray on a bald head partly bent beneath the cash register. A black-whiskered face growled up at me, eyes livid in the light pouring into them through the blood-red lampshade.
“Another five minutes and you’d have been filing for pogey,” he rasped in a smoke-shredded voice.
“Yeah, I know, I know,” I cut in, aborting Cork’s well-rehearsed diatribe about last chances. “So, the nice little niece is still without a job?”
“Day’s not out yet.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Where’s my float—get me my float.”
“Your da make it?”
“Just fine, thanks, Cork. So, you missed me a bit, huh?”
Cork smirked. “Miss anything with tits in this gonad saloon.”
“Charmed,” I replied. Taking my tray to a nearby table, I stacked it with empties and then dragged a damp rag across the newly lacquered tabletop. I moved to another, noting as I always did the freshness of the butt burns—like the hardwood floor beneath my feet, untouched by time but scuffed and scarred by the sudden influx of heavy boots and their chain-smoking owners.
“Four whiskies and jug of draft, Cork.” I boxed the empties and put my tray on the bar, stacking it with clean ashtrays. “Brought my brother back with me—to find work. Any of them contractors?” I asked, glancing about the room.
“Spin a bottle and pick one, Skinny.” Cork landed a jug of draft on my tray and rang open his cash register, his bull-like face turning whimsical as he swept a pile of change off the bar. “Hear that—prairie gold,” he drawled, rattling the coin into his till. “Love that prairie gold.”
“Yeah, count it wisely—back home we could walk on water once, the fish was so thick.”
“That’s the nature of it, Skinny—nothing lives forever. Even stars burn out. Bring your brother around, we can use him in the club down the road.”
“No bar work, thanks.”
“Whoo—the lady’s got airs. Listen to me, sweet madam,” he said, hosing steaming hot water over the jumble of glasses filling the sink, “I got collars white as snow tucked away somewhere— that a smirk? Don’t believe I got collars white as snow?”
“Yeah,’course I do.”
He slapped a steamed pink hand onto mine. “Mind your manners then. Go wriggle them hips. You’re sitting on a fortune.”
“Chrissakes, Cork.”
“Just helping you along.”
“Stuff it.” I busied myself serving the men. As though spoiled from their week’s hiatus, my eyes started watering from the smoke and my head ached from the loud hum of voices.
A different voice sounded amongst the babble and I turned towards it as might a new mother in a nursery full of bawling newborns. Chris was waving from the doorway. Beside him stood Ben, his curls scrunched beneath a ball cap, his face quirked by a hesitant grin as he held up a hand in greeting. I quelled the sudden leap in my heart, focusing on Chris as he thumped Ben’s shoulder, mouthing “Look who I found” as though their discovery of each other was some miraculous feat. Marching to the bar, I set down my half loaded tray and called out to Cork, “That construction crew from back east— the ones building the new hotel down the street, they still coming around?”
“Like church on Sunday. Pansy-assed drinkers, not worth the spit polishing their glasses. That your brother?”
I looked at him in surprise. “How’d you know that?”
“Looks like you, only prettier. Here,” he said, hefting a jug of draft onto my tray, “teach him the ways of men.”
Ben and Chris were seating themselves at a corner table, talking intently. They pulled back as I approached, Chris’s eyes, his smile, striving to appease.
“Ah, good call, Sis,” he exclaimed as I laid the jug and two glasses before him. “Dryer than a rusty faucet.”
“Good to see you,” said Ben. He gave me a tight hug. “Mother’s been updating me on your dad,” he said quietly, “must’ve been a helluva time.” He squeezed my hand and sat down. I noted the lines marking a jaw that had sat rigid too long, yet the haunted look in his eyes had eased since I last saw him, a hint of his old revelry showing through. My flesh still warmed from the touch of his hand squeezing mine, and I absently rubbed it against the side of my jeans.
“Dad’s gonna be fine,” I replied. “And so,” I looked to them both, “what are the odds of this—the two of you
finding
each other?”
“Darndest thing,” said Ben dryly. “So happens I’m in town for supplies—groceries and stuff.” He looked to Chris, who was pouring the beer.
“Found this great art shop down the street, Sis,” said Chris. He passed along a glass for Ben. “Thought I’d do some drawing—you know, between making money and buying trucks.” He tipped his beer towards me as though his words were reimbursement for some ill deed, then clinked his glass against Ben’s. “Cheers, buddy.” He drank deeply, the froth gathering against his upper lip like milk, then thumped his glass on the table and grinned at Ben, at me, his face freed from worry for the first time in days.
I smiled despite myself. “Did you call Gran?”
His grin vanished. “Fine. They’re fine. Mother phoned from the hospital already, Dad’s doing lots better. He’s up and walking some—believe that? Gran’s making soup for supper, and Kyle’s at the hospital, too.” He stopped. “Gran said to say her shaking’s stopped—what shaking? Never seen Gran shaking—did she mean her hands?”
I was kept from answering by a drunken voice hailing me from across the floor. “Back in a sec.” I moved off, spending the next ten, fifteen minutes fetching beer, fetching rum, my fingers automatically sorting the cash, all the while feeling an unease about Ben’s sudden appearance and his meeting up with Chris. And yet I kept warming to the sound of their voices rising and falling through the babble, sounding terse and heated at times, then jovial and soft with laughter. Such a familiar sound from my past it was that my step involuntarily slowed each time I passed their table, a part of me craving the music of their voices, the almost forgotten song of our last summer together, pulled from its dusty sleeve.
“That construction crew,” I said to Chris, setting another jug of draft on their table, “they’ll be here later today. Stick around, now.”
Taking a deep gulp of his beer, Chris landed his glass onto the table in a combative manner. “Got a job, Sis. Working the rigs. With Ben and Trapp.”
His words fell against my ear like a heavy drumbeat. His eyes, as he turned them onto me, were fraught with purpose and perhaps even a tinge of excitement.
“I knew it, I knew it!” I turned to Ben, who was throwing up his hands defensively.
“Wasn’t my idea, thought you knew all about it.”
“Anyway, nothing to argue about,” said Chris, assuming a casual air. “Was gonna tell you—”
“When?” I cut in angrily. “From across town in a phone booth—”
“I came here, didn’t I?”
“Hiding behind Ben.”
“Think he got us both,” said Ben. “But hey, listen, it’s not that bad—rig work. I got him a peasy job.”
“Four thousand, three hundred accidents in one year—out of a crew of seven thousand, five hundred,” I snapped at Ben. “When? When did you fix this up?” I demanded, unable to keep from glaring accusingly at Ben.
“When you were at the hospital. Ben called to see about Dad— No!” Chris smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “This got nothing to do with Ben. It’s got to do with me, understand?” His eyes hardened, his mouth compressing so tightly it twisted his jawline, and for one bizarre moment my brother appeared a stranger before me. “You’re bad as Mother,” he said deeply, “thinking others got to put thoughts in my head, that I got none of my own.” He held my stare, his whole being so tightly strung across the moment that his top lip began to quiver.