Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

God knows how long it would be before Lorna came for another visit, or called to invite him over there, which was always exciting to think about but when he actually got there, to the city, to her apartment, to the cafés and bars and theatres and universities and health food stores and bookstores, he always felt like an idiot, like a big goofy farmboy on a school field trip, riding a big orange bus that said Algren Municipality Elementary School, and Lorna saying “Hi, hi there, how are you” to people he had never met, and introducing him and should he stick out his hand, and is this rough-looking guy hugging Lorna because he’s what they call New Age, or … Or the time he had driven to the city for that Emmylou Harris concert and his car had started on fire at a red light. He remembered running into a little grocery store and asking to use the telephone and the guy said, “No, no, sorry no.” Then, when he got back to his burning car, some kids in the neighbourhood had pelted him with hard, wet snowballs, laughing and yelling at him, “Let it burn! Let it burn!” No, he much preferred to have Lorna in his little house in Algren, baking cinnamon buns, just the two of them. And then, oh stupid me, he thought, that’s just what Lorna had said she wanted, too, and he’d said, “Oh you,” which she decided he meant as Oh you, that’s a crazy romantic notion that really has no place in our lives, when he’d meant the opposite, and wanted the very same thing, but how could he tell her Algren didn’t have room for her? She would have to be counted and he didn’t have enough dying people to level it off. How could someone tell somebody else something like that? Could Lorna wait until after July first? Hosea shook his head slowly. She would have to, oh please.

Hosea had tried to get her attention but the bus just drove away under a sky the colour of glue and Lorna stared straight ahead. Hosea picked up a piece of hard snow and chucked it at her window and smiled and waved, but she had looked at him with one of those withering looks, a look that said, Chucking hard pieces of snow against my section of bus window will not thaw my frozen heart.

Hosea walked over to the chunk of snow, the one he had chucked at Lorna’s window, and looked at it. The snow around it was dusty from the exhaust fumes of the bus. Hosea gently kicked the chunk of snow towards the sidewalk. He walked up to it and kicked it again, a little harder, to get over the ridge of snow that lined the sidewalk. Up and over, there it went. Hosea continued kicking the chunk of snow towards home. It was getting smaller and smaller. He hoped he could get it home before it disappeared. Gentle kicks, but long distances. Scoop it from underneath with the top of your foot. That was the trick. He shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. What if somebody saw him, the mayor of Algren, kicking a piece of snow down the sidewalk? Well, it wasn’t far to his house, and besides he’d done it as a boy, with Tom. They’d pick their chunks, inspecting them closely to make sure they were pretty much exactly the same size and weight, and then home they’d go. When they got home, if their chunks of snow hadn’t disappeared or been kicked so far they got lost, they’d play hockey with one of them until it did disappear and then, for a big laugh, they’d continue to play with it. It wasn’t there but they’d play with it anyway, taking slapshots, scoring goals, having it dropped by imaginary referees at centre ice, skating like crazy down the ice to catch the rebound off their sticks. Often, they would argue about goals, the puck being offside, illegal penalty shots, all that stuff, and they’d have huge hockey fights, throwing their woollen mittens down on the ground and trying to pull each other’s jackets off over their heads.

One day Euphemia came out of the house with an empty whipping cream carton. “Here, you boys,” she’d said. “Why don’t you use this?” And she had put it down in the snow and stomped on it once for all she was worth and then picked the flattish thing up and tossed it over to them. They’d used it for a while, and Euphemia stood washing dishes looking out at them in the back lane and smiling, and then they’d gone to the front of the house, to the street, where Euphemia wasn’t as sure to watch them, and went back to their imaginary puck.

It was Sunday. Algren was dead. Hosea slowly made his way home. As he walked past the back of the Wagon Wheel Café, Mrs. Cherniski, the owner of the café, poked her head out of the kitchen and said, “Hey, Hosea!” Hosea’s head snapped up like a fish on a line, but not before he made a mental note of where his chunk of ice had stopped.

“Hello, Mrs. Cherniski, how goes the battle?” said Hosea.

“So that is you, I was wondering,” said Mrs. Cherniski, “with that hat and everything. Looks like old Leander gave you his hat before he passed on. Nice of him. But I’d have it cleaned, if I was you.”

“Yes, I should, I suppose,” said Hosea, thinking that all its filth and wear was what he loved about it.

“Well,” said Mrs. Cherniski, “I’ll tell you something. If you don’t get rid of that damn black dog out there, the one hanging around the front of my shop, I’ll shoot the damn thing myself, not a word of a lie.”

“Oh no,” said Hosea, “don’t do that. I’ll find out who owns that dog and make sure they keep him on a line from now on.”

“Well good, you better,” said Mrs. Cherniski. “Last night I had thirty people in my store, you know the Whryahha clan up for the son’s wedding, a private booking. I was serving roast beef and lobster bisque and damned if that dog isn’t sitting outside right there on the sidewalk, his rear end twitching in the wind. Then, dammit, he’s hunkering down in front of all the Whryahha’s in their Sunday best, and I see he’s having a shit right there on the path.”

Hosea adjusted his hat and glanced at his chunk of ice. He shook his head in mock alarm for Mrs. Cherniski’s sake and said, “Hmmmph, that’s not very good.”

“No it isn’t,” said Mrs. Cherniski. “A tableful of those Whryahhas just up and left, they couldn’t finish their meals and they weren’t about to pay for them, having to eat while a mangy mutt craps away right there in front of them. I damn well lost close to two hundred dollars last night, not to mention my reputation. Thank God I’m the only café in town, but Jesus, Hosea, you have to do something about that dog.”

“You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Cherniski. I’ll see to it pronto. In the meantime, you might want to try shooing it away, maybe a little kick.”

“A little kick, my ass,” muttered Mrs. Cherniski. “I’ll plug the goddamn thing right between the—” but she was back inside. Slam went the back door of her café in Hosea’s face.

Adjusting his hat, he went over to his ice chunk and gave it another kick towards home. He looked up at the water tower and wondered what colour to paint it when and if he ever found the money for paint. Bright red would be nice, maybe with a huge decal of a white horse that would wind itself around the tower’s entire circular top. He looked at the boarded-up feed mill and thought of turning it into a type of make-work project for the youth of Algren during the summer months. Perhaps they could turn it into a junior summer stock theatre for tourists passing through, on their way west to Vancouver, or east to Toronto. A quaint prairie play, maybe Lawrence Hamm could donate an old thresher that they could paint and put in the front of the theatre as a symbolic monument to a bucolic past. Now Hosea’s mind began to spin.

He passed a couple of kids walking down the street. Their jackets were open and they were wearing rubber boots. “Hello there,” he said, “beautiful spring day, isn’t it?” The kids smiled and said, “Hi.” They knew who he was but they didn’t respond to his comment about the beautiful day. As a rule, thought Hosea, and he must remember this in the future, kids do not respond to comments about the weather. He stole a glance over his shoulder, making sure the kids weren’t looking back at him, and then quickly retrieved his chunk of ice from the gutter of the road. He had overkicked. Suddenly Hosea wondered to himself what Euphemia had done all day when he was away in school.