Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“Wow. But what about afterwards? You know, when we eat them, the crops. Fecal residue.”

“We can’t tell.”

“Really? We’re eating animal shit and we don’t know it?”

“Well, we know it, I guess, we just don’t think about it.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t stink now. There should be no fertilizer on the fields now because it would have been cut down with the crops, you know, reaped, in the fall. Wouldn’t the farmers wait until spring has really sprung to put fresh shit on the fields? Like just before they plant or sow or whatever it’s called?”

“Seed,” said Knute. “And it’s not reaped, it’s harvested.”

“Seed, yeah,” said Marilyn.

“I don’t know when they do it,” said Knute.

“Well, spring, obviously, Knute, that’s when crops are planted. That’s when they need to be fertilized.”

“I don’t know, they could be perennials. Maybe they just come up at the same time every year. Like tulips.”

“I don’t think so,” said Marilyn.

“I don’t know,” said Knute.

Over at Combine Jo’s, Marilyn wandered around the house saying, “Holy moly, three bathrooms!” and “She lives here all alone?” and things like that. Max kissed her on both cheeks when Knute introduced them and said, “Pleased to meet you, Marilyn, Joshua, S.F.’s been telling me all about you.”

“Joshua’s allergic to dairy products,” she finally managed to say. Knute told Max that Joshua was there to play with S.F. and she and Marilyn were going out. They’d be back around three. Max gave them a bottle of fine wine from Combine Jo’s stash and half a pack of cigarettes, and suggested they go out to Johnny Dranger’s rotting pile of hay bales, sit on top of it, and get hammered. They’d be able to see for miles and miles, he said. It was covered with orange plastic and sagging in the middle so if they got cold, he added, they could just hunker down in the centre and be protected from the wind.

Good idea, thought Knute, but how the hell did he know about Johnny Dranger’s pile of hay?

“I go there to write,” he said, grinning. Knute and Marilyn left and as soon as they were out of the house they looked at each other and said, “Yeah, right.” Then Marilyn started laughing and telling Knute that Max was foxy, shorter than she had expected, nice eyes, all the stuff Knute already knew. Write, my ass, she thought. “Hang on,” she said to Marilyn. She went back to the house and a few minutes later came back with another bottle — Jack Daniel’s — and Marilyn said, “What about that dog? Bill Whatshisname, how’re we gonna get rid of a dog from on top of a pile of hay?”

“Screw Bill Quinn,” Knute said. “Let’s go.”

Hosea Funk had spent the past few days cleaning out his house, getting rid of all the old sad things of Euphemia’s, her Noxema, her Dippity-Do, her alum powder for canker sores, her old winter boots, the half-finished bags of scotch mints, and all her old clothes. He fixed his fridge and cleaned out the grout from behind the taps on the bathroom and kitchen sinks. He had planned to remove all of Euphemia’s Reader’s Digest condensed books from the small pantry in the basement. That’s when he found out someone in his house had been drinking rye whiskey, and lots of it. Boxes and boxes of empty bottles had been stored, or hidden, behind the boxes of Reader’s Digests.

Hosea had sat down on the cold cement floor. His eyes followed a crack that led to the drain hole. He remembered Tom telling him not to pee in it because he’d heard of some guy in Chicago or somewhere who had peed in his drain hole and had hit some electrical current that had travelled up the length of his stream of urine and then zap, his penis had been electrocuted and had turned black and shrivelled up right then and there. He must have been bullshitting me, thought Hosea. He sat there and no other thoughts came to mind other than the one he had been fighting off for the last minute or two.

She was drunk when she told me the Prime Minister was my father.

No, he thought, she couldn’t have been. She was on her deathbed. She couldn’t walk to the pantry in the basement to get a bottle, let alone lift her head to drink from it. “Her heart simply gave out on her, Hosea,” the doctor had said after she died. Her heart or her liver? She wasn’t very old. Had anybody known? Had the doctor known? Why was she drinking herself to death?

He had stared at the bottles for half an hour. He had never seen her drink, never seen her drunk. Had he just not known? She had always seemed content and in control. Did she drink only at night while he slept? During the day while he was at school? Is that what she did all day? Is that why she laughed and shrugged her shoulders at just about everything? Is that why she bought so many bags of scotch mints? Is that why she did handstands on the kitchen chairs?

Oh, Lord, it doesn’t matter, Hosea told himself, and smiled. He thought about tempting fate and pissing in the drain hole. Who can blame her, after all? he thought. She was alone.

Is there something bad ’bout a lady drinking all alone in a room? A letter in your handwriting … hmmmm, he couldn’t remember what the next words were.

Rye whiskey, thought Hosea. Had he picked fresh roses from Euphemia’s garden that day after school for somebody who had never been there? Rye whiskey roses for a rye whiskey man. Well, thought Hosea, I’m real, anyway. “Mother,” he said out loud, “was your life unbearable?” A letter in your handwriting and the scent of your perfume, I’m sorry, darling, so sorry, darling, I just assumed … is that how it went? Hosea hummed a little out of tune. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am.”

He would tell Lorna about his plan. He would tell her she could move in with him after July first and do whatever she wanted with him and the house. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell her about his plan, she might think he was crazy. He would tell her something else. Something that would make the July first date seem somehow prescient, significant, romantic, and well, just right.

On that same day that he had been cleaning, Hosea had found out from Jeannie that Tom was not doing well. Nor, for that matter, was Dory. Jeannie had said both were depressed and miserable and trying to fool themselves for the sake of their daughter and granddaughter. There was more but Hosea had suddenly feigned back pain and staggered into his house explaining to Jeannie that he needed some Tylenol and an ice pack.

Hosea sat in his clean house and wondered about his old buddy Tom. Expansive, humble, tolerant Tom. Feeling bad. And worse, depressed. Well, thought Hosea. He needs a friend and that friend is me.

Hosea looked outside and noticed Euphemia’s rose bush blooming for the first time that spring. A dozen roses in a bottle of rye whiskey, thought Hosea. That would cheer him up. Hosea put on his windbreaker and Leander’s hat and went outside and picked some roses and stuffed them inside one of Euphemia’s empty whiskey bottles.

“Hosea! Roses! C’mon in!” Dory opened the door and took the bottle of roses. “Thank-you,” she said. “That’s very sweet of you, Hose.” Hosea thought she looked like she’d been crying.

“Well, you’re welcome,” he said. “You know, I looked out the window and there they were. They’re for Tom, too.”

“Of course,” said Dory, “of course they are.” Had she sighed just then? wondered Hosea. “He’s in the bedroom, Hose, if you want to say hello. He’s not feeling well enough to get out of bed. Just walk in. Here, bring him these.” She handed him the bottle of roses and said, “I’m leaving for a while. You keep him company. He’s had his pills, he won’t eat, and I’ll be back in half an hour. Good-bye.” She smiled. “If he wakes up and wonders where I am,” she said, “tell him I’ll be back in half an hour. He likes to know.”