Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“Dammit,” said Hosea, “it’s Bill Quinn.” Hosea lunged for the dog and missed while Lorna put her hands to her face like Munch’s model in The Scream , except she was laughing, and Bill Quinn kept walking. Tick tick tick tick. No problem. Enjoy your trip, Mr. Mayor? See you in the fall, har har.

“It’s okay, Hosea,” said Lorna. “He’s crossing the street, Cherniski won’t be able to see him. Don’t worry.” She crouched down and touched Hosea’s shoulder.

“All right, up you go now, old man,” said Lorna.

“Hey! Whatcha doin’, Hose?” said Combine Jo, who had just pulled up next to the sidewalk Hosea was lying on. “Listening for hoofbeats? Are we in for a raid? Whoah, girl,” she said, as she turned off the ignition. “How much time do we have, Sheriff Funk?”

Hosea cleared his throat. “Actually, I was trying to catch Bill Quinn, but he got away and I tripped over him.” Lorna and Combine Jo exchanged grins.

“Hah!” said Combine Jo, “serves you right, padre, nobody catches a Quinn. Hello, Lorna, nice seeing you, you oughtta hang a sign around Mr. Loverboy here’s neck saying so and so many accident-free days — you wouldn’t get past eight or nine. You know he’s a magnet for trouble, Cherniski will attest to that, strange things happen when he’s around, ask the doc, when Hosea goes to the hospital the Earth moves. People die, babies are born …”

“Oh, Jo, that’s not true,” said Hosea, stretching his mouth into the shape of a smile, more painful than vaginal tearing during childbirth, he thought, remembering the lurid chapter of the pregnant woman book he was currently reading. Not true at all, heh, heh, stretch those lips, push the teeth to the fore and chuckle confidently, now he felt his mouth was at least forty centimetres dilated, don’t forget to breathe and—

“She’s gone, Hosea,” said Lorna. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Hosea, massaging his cheeks, returning them to their original position, expecting to taste blood and pass out at any moment. “Just fine. Shall we?” he said. Hosea and Lorna walked slowly to the bus depot. Hosea didn’t want to say goodbye. He hated saying good-bye. Lorna was sighing in that way people do after laughing, shaking her head, “Ooohhhh God, Hosea,” wiping at her eyes, emitting a few remaining snorts and guffaws. Hosea nodded his head and grimaced amicably. “Ha ha,” he said, “go ahead and laugh. It’s good for the baby.”

“Good-bye, Hosea,” said Lorna, dropping her sunglasses and her bus ticket and holding her arms out for a hug.

“Oops, I’ll get those,” said Hosea. “Good-bye, Lorna, don’t take your love to town.”

“Excuse me?” said Lorna, starting to laugh all over again. “Okay, Hosea, I won’t…. don’t you take your love to town, either….” And then she was gone, laughing, dropping her sunglasses, waving good-bye. Hosea popped a Frisk into his mouth and stood watching while the bus disappeared. He headed back to the Wagon Wheel, hoping, as he always did, for an answer to his question. Man’s life’s a vapour, full of woes … Oh, Mrs. Cherniski, he rehearsed in his mind, you know how I like to pay a visit to new residents of Algren, just to make them feel welcome and all that, so I’m just wondering … (Hosea cocked his head in an attempt to appear sincere) when did you say your daughter was coming to town? Hosea looked over his shoulder, half expecting Lorna to be trailing him, like a probation officer. Aha, she’d say, I told you not to go near Mrs. Cherniski, I told you to leave her alone, you’ve breached the conditions of your probation, Hosea, and now you must be punished. Hosea practised his delivery one more time, “Oh, Mrs. Cherniski … just to make them feel welcome and all that.” He saw Lawrence Hamm pulling up to the feed mill in his silver pickup and immediately Hosea felt the top of his head, was it there? No, thank God, no hat … he’d left it at home. Well, thought Hosea, that will have to do. He nodded at Lawrence across the street, had a quick look around for Bill Quinn, and opened the front door of the Wagon Wheel Café.

In the evenings after Summer Feelin’ went to bed, Max and Knute would sit on top of Johnny Dranger’s pile of hay and smoke and talk and make love. It seemed like maybe they could be a real couple again. They talked about their childhoods. They were okay, pretty good. Knute’s was better. Max told her that he felt his mother loved him. That she loved a lot of things, a lot of people, and that hers was a hard way to go, a potentially disastrous way of living. Knute listened to him talk a lot about Combine Jo. She had got used to hating her, so she didn’t know what to say. Knute talked a bit about Tom and Dory, and Max shook his head. “I wonder what he wants,” he said about Tom. They talked about what Summer Feelin’ got from Max and what she got from Knute. They laughed a lot. The purple sky and warm breeze and the smell of dirt and fresh seed inspired them. Even if they couldn’t quite see a future together they could remember a past, and that was enough to build on. Dusk on the prairie in June, that’s where they were. Enough light to see what’s in your face, too much darkness to see what lies beyond.

“It’s good to be back,” said Max. “I missed you, Nudie. And I love being a dad, although it is weird….”

“That would explain all those hundreds of letters and longdistance phone calls,” said Knute. They were lying on top of their pile of hay, in Johnny’s field.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay, I didn’t call or write or whatever, but I was fucked up. So you can’t resent the fact, or you can, whatever, but you can’t be justifiably pissed that I had a brain problem and left when I was told to. And as for Summer Feelin’, I was scared to death of finding out about her. That was a major deal for me and don’t you think for a second I didn’t care about her. I figured I was doing her and you a favour by just disappearing. Okay, it’s a cliché, whatever, and you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true. I didn’t have a fucking clue what to do about her or you or myself or anything.”

“Well,” said Knute, “didn’t your mother tell you to leave so you wouldn’t get stuck being a father at your age, and with some girl who you maybe weren’t totally sure about and you just said, ‘Yes, Mother, good idea, Mother …’”

“No. That didn’t happen. I just told you that at the time. I was pissed off at you for telling me to fuck off just because I wasn’t initially thrilled at the prospect of having a kid. I mean, you know, were you thrilled? At the time? I was worried that you’d just leave me out of the whole thing, think of me as a totally useless parent. I was mad that we couldn’t just deal with it openly, I was pissed off that I couldn’t express doubt about having a baby without being thought of as a total shit…. So, whatever, for some stupid reason, I guess I was just scared, or confused, or whatever, I said my mother had encouraged me to leave, which, in hindsight, made me look like a total fucking spineless little kid, Mommy told me to leave, et cetera, et cetera, and made you hate me, and my mother, who really is just a harmless drunk, not a bad one, and she can’t figure out why you hate her, except that she assumed you’d hate me, for leaving, and … you know, hate her by proxy. I don’t know, whatever, it was a lie and I had a major brain problem. Okay? I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Knute. “Okay?” She took Max’s hand.

Max took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said.

Knute looked at his face. She tried to see it the way Combine Jo would have. She tried to look at it with love only. And concern.

They lay there quietly for a long time and watched the purple fade from the sky. They saw some lights go on in town and saw Johnny Dranger’s yard light go on and they heard his dog bark a couple of times and the slam of a car door and Johnny yelling at the dog. If they hadn’t lived in Algren most of their lives they would have smelled the liquid fertilizer on the fields. They were used to the smell of shit.