Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“Just pick me up at seven, Hosea,” she said. “And you know, whatever.” She hung up.

Hosea closed his eyes. He could feel the warm wind blowing through his open window. He could smell the dust left over from last fall and he could hear Combine Jo laughing down on the street. He thought how much happier Leander Hamm’s corpse would be now that the earth was drying up and the snow had gone. My blood, he thought. I’d sell my blood to buy her chocolate donuts. That had been the first line of a poem he’d written on a scrap of paper the day he had decided to become a poet. He’d changed it around a million times trying to get something to rhyme with donuts and then with blood. Nothing. Except flood, and that had seemed futile. Euphemia had found the scrap of paper in his pocket and had laughed out loud for twenty minutes, and then had broken her leg. Hosea had been in the basement and had seen a spider, and because he was frustrated with his poem had screamed at the top of his lungs, “SPIDER!” Euphemia had come running and falling down the stairs, saying, “Where where where’s the fire” and her leg made a snapping noise and her femur poked off in the wrong direction, and Hosea had been quite happy about it. Even while Euphemia lay writhing on the basement floor, he had muttered sullenly, “I said spider , not fire.” Later that day he had written in his notebook that Vincent van Gogh and a lot of other great artists in the world didn’t care what people thought of them, which was nothing.

Hosea opened his eyes. Everything was going to be all right. He and Lorna would work things out. He’d tell her the truth about his plan and she would understand. She would know why he wanted to see his father. She loved him and she would know. He would take the Prime Minister by the arm and they would stroll off a ways from the crowd, down Main Street towards where the sidewalk ends, and then up Town Line Road in the direction of the dike, and Hosea would smile and say, Mr. Prime Minister, do you remember meeting a girl named Euphemia Funk years ago right here in this town? Well, I’m her son. He would smile and look into the PM’s face. And yours, he’d say. He wanted to show the Prime Minister his town, Canada’s smallest, the place of his conception, his birth, and his whole life. He wanted the Prime Minister to see it and to like it and to think well of Euphemia and the place where she was from and the son that she had raised. Lorna would understand. It was simple. Hosea nodded his head and smoothed the shiny surface of his desk with his hand. He reached for the top drawer and then decided against opening it. He would find Knute and the two of them would plant the flowers along Main Street. He would help her. And then he would go to the bus depot and pick up Lorna and show her the flowers and take her home.

“He doesn’t go out at all?” Knute asked Dory.

“Nope,” she said.

“What about when I’m at work?”

Dory shook her head. “Mm-mm.”

“Does he get up to eat?” Knute asked.

“No. Not really, no,” said Dory. She and Knute were in the kitchen drinking coffee and watching the sun go down. Dory leaned towards the open window, over the sink, and the warm breeze blew the hair off her forehead. Beyond Tom and Dory’s big backyard was a field, plowed and ready for seeding, pitch-black and chunky, with a faint line of bushes towards the very end, and the giant orange sun was slipping down behind those bushes, round as a poker chip, and the purple sky covered everything. That was the view.

“You know what, Knutie?” said Dory. “Tom and I have lived here all our lives. In this town, every single day of our lives.”

“Do you think that’s what’s making Dad so sad?” asked Knute. Dory looked at her and smiled.

“No, Knute,” she said. “It’s just the opposite. He loves this place, it’s all he’s known. He’s afraid to say good-bye. He’s afraid to leave it behind. He’s afraid, Knutie.”

“But he’s been given a second chance,” said Knute. “He’s still alive.”

“It’s more mysterious than that,” said Dory. “He wants his old life. He’s not a stupid man. For him to get up and cheerfully make the most of each day, at this point … he would feel like a fool.” Dory shook her head. Then she said, “He would be admitting to himself that life has suddenly become very short, very precious, that soon he’ll no longer exist, that it’ll be over. Of course he knew that, we know that, we say it, but to really, really know it, to be certain of it, is more than he can be right now. His bed is safe. Sleep is easy.” Then she said again, “He’s not a stupid man.”

The sun had gone down right before their eyes. “Did you notice it disappear?” Dory asked Knute.

“Well, I noticed it was gone,” said Knute. She put their coffee cups in the dishwasher and then stood with her hands on her hips and looked at Dory. “I’m going out,” she said. “Don’t worry about Summer Feelin’, she won’t wake up.” Dory reached out her arms and put her hands over Knute’s.

“I’m not worried,” she said. “I think I can take care of one little girl well enough on my own.”

“Yeah, well,” said Knute, smiling, “I suppose you’ve managed before, more or less.”

“What do you mean you suppose? What do you mean more or less?” Dory said, grabbing the tea towel from the fridge door and swatting Knute with it. “More or less,” she growled. “My foot, more or less. Ingrate! Get out of here!” She snapped Knute with the towel. “Hey,” she said, “where are you off to?”

“Oh,” said Knute, grinning. “A little paperwork at the office.”

“Really? I’m impressed.”

“Nah,” Knute said, “I’m going to check out my flowers. Hosea and I planted millions of them today, all along Main Street. And they’re all red and white. We planted them so they’d look like Canadian flags. It was his idea.”

Dory began to laugh. “Really?” she said again.

“That’s right,” Knute said, lowering her voice and tugging at the front of her sweatshirt, “that’s right. We can all be proud of Algren, Canada’s smallest town. Well, Dory, I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, really better get going. You know how it is, places to go, people to see.”

“Yes yes, Mayor Funk,” said Dory. “Onward and upward. Don’t let me stand in the way of progress. Carpe diem.”

“Okey, dokey,” said Knute. “And give my regards to Tom. And, uh, thanks for the coffee, Dory, you always did make a fine cup of coffee.”

Dory shook her head. “Oh you,” she said. “Go already.” She was looking at the wall where the mirror used to be, before Combine Jo broke it. Hosea Funk, she sighed. Lord love him, what a funny man.

Knute walked out of the house and down the driveway. The night was warm and very dark. She felt like crying. She hadn’t done a good job of helping Dory with Tom, and it was already June. She hadn’t helped him get better or lightened Dory’s load. He’d taken to his bed and Knute was concerned that Dory might be thinking of joining him. How much longer could she renovate one medium-sized house? Knute cut behind the feed mill and around by the bank and the post office and walked towards the flowers. She could smell them, they were beautiful, and they shone under the only streetlight. Something small and black jumped out from the middle of the flower bed and disappeared. Then another followed, and another. She bent over to see what they were and was almost hit in the face with another one. The Algren cockroach! The bastards were eating her flowers! She stood up and frowned at the flower bed and then picked up a few pebbles from the road and threw them into the flowers. About twenty of the cockroaches flew up and took off in different directions. She picked up another handful of gravel and threw it in the flowers and was about to do it again when she heard a voice say “Hey!” and she nearly fell over from fright.