Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“No?” said Knute.

“I wanted to take care of people,” said Tom. “I would have liked to have become a doctor.”

“Really? Why didn’t you?”

Tom sighed and smiled at her. “I was afraid I’d make a mistake.” They heard S.F. running down the hall and yelling, “Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here!”

“Well,” said Knute, “S.F. needs a lot of attention and Max has a broken leg …”

Tom smiled. “Think that’ll keep him from running away again?” he asked.

Knute reached around to feel her cigarettes in her back pocket.

“Gotta go,” she said.

“Hey, Knutie,” said Tom, “how’s Hosea doing?”

“Fine, fine,” Knute said. “He’s kind of strange, he’s okay.”

Tom smiled. “Say hi to him, will you?”

Knute nodded. “You were afraid to make a mistake because … why?”

Tom sighed again.

“I know why,” said Knute. “Because you wouldn’t want to be responsible for screwing somebody’s life up, or for cutting it short. You wouldn’t want to kill anybody. Right?”

“Yes,” said Tom, “that’s part of it.”

“But then again, you might have saved somebody’s life. Or made it better.”

Tom was quiet.

“You know,” he said finally, “horses gather in clusters when they know it’s going to rain. Isn’t that smart? So if you want to know when it’s going to rain, go for a drive in the country and look at the horses. They always know.” He closed his eyes and smiled. Knute could hear Dory giving instructions to Max. “… and a chicken casserole in the freezer if you’re interested … and his tablets are on the kitchen table, S.F. likes to bring them to him in an egg cup …”

“Tablets?” said Max.

“Pills,” said S.F. “Tablets are pills.”

“Okay,” said Max, “fine. Do you know how many he gets and how many times, all that?”

“She knows,” said Dory. “If he doesn’t wake up or respond when she goes in, she just leaves them on the bedside table. He takes them eventually. Or so we think, anyway … is that a skirt you’re wearing?”

Knute looked at Tom. Did he listen to their conversations all day? Did he care? His eyes were closed and his feet stuck out from beneath his blanket. They were big, strong-looking feet with blue veins all over them and they looked ridiculous poking out from under the soft, yellow cover.

“Yeah, it’s a skirt,” Knute heard Max say. “I’m not going to cut my jeans to get them over this stupid cast, and I refuse, on principle, to wear sweat pants or baggy shorts, so for now I’m wearing dresses. They’re cooler.” Knute heard Dory and S.F. begin to laugh and she left Tom to join them. Sure enough, Max had a skirt on and a wide leather belt. The skirt was a green suede mini with pockets that had outer stitching on them. He had one big black boot on, with a hockey sock, a baseball cap on backwards that said And? on the front of it, and no shirt. She noticed a few scratches on his shoulder that she had probably given him. His cast was covered with S.F.’s drawings of hearts and flowers and crooked houses with smoke coming out of their chimneys. She had painted the toenails poking out of the cast a light pink. “It’s one of my mom’s,” he explained to us. “It was too big, of course, so I just cinched it here with this tool belt, like this, and … what do you think?” S.F. nodded her head and said, “It’s cute,” and Dory said, “Nice legs.”

Richard? thought Hosea. No. Tobias? No, no. Magnolia? Scarlet? Or just Jane? Emmylou? No, he couldn’t. How about Lorna? She’d hate it. Not another Lorna Garden, she’d groan. Euphemia? Hmmmmm … too bad Summer Feelin’s taken, he thought, and smiled. He was on his way to Gord and Veronica Epp’s place. On the way he’d survey his town and note the progress Knute was making with the flowers, the painters were making with the water tower, and the renovation people with the old feed mill.

It was a beautiful hot mid-June day and Hosea was wearing shorts for the first time that year. He also had on a tomato-red T-shirt with white letters spelling Canada, a woven belt he’d bought at a Native American craft shop in Denver when he’d been trying to impress Lorna at the auctioneers’ convention, white tube socks, and his L.A. Gear runners. And, of course, his hat, Leander’s hat, which was the same shade of beige as his shorts. He looked down at himself, for a second, while driving, and thought he might look like Indiana Jones’s dad. Oh well, he didn’t care. Things were good, only one person too many in his town, a woman who loved him, an almost guaranteed visit from the man who must be his father, a bun in the oven — sorry, he thought, a baby on the way — and, to top it off, he’d lost six and a half pounds.

He drove down First Street and turned left onto Main, towards the feed mill. On the sunny side of the street he saw Knute, who had been taking care of the flowers, suddenly drench herself with the water in her watering can, and the doctor standing beside her wearing cycling shorts and a tight T-shirt and laughing. Hosea smiled. Nothing wrong with that, he thought. He watched as Knute shook her head and sprayed water all over the doctor.

Hosea wiped his brow and rubbed his sweaty hand on his shorts. “Gad, it’s hat,” he said out loud like an American in a sauna somewhere in Texas. Knutie and Bonsoir can’t be having a, a thing, can they? he thought to himself, remembering the young men in the city Lorna hugged and cracked jokes with. If I wasn’t so old, he thought, if I wasn’t Indiana Jones’s pappy, I’d understand. Hosea quickly tugged at his shirt front and dropped his shoulders in an attempt to appear relaxed. No, can’t be, he thought. He knew Max and Knute were a happy couple these days … he’d been hoping Max would leave town again, mysteriously disappear like before, in fact he was sure it would happen, and now … it wasn’t happening. But of course he was happy for Max and Knute and Summer Feelin’, he just, dammit, he just needed Max to leave. He needed somebody to leave, anybody really, he had thought Max would be the natural choice. But S.F. loves him, she knows him now, how could he hope Max would disappear …“Fucking hell!” said Hosea. He looked down at the neatly ironed crease in his shorts and his pale legs and thought about the Prime Minister, about Lorna, Euphemia, his own unborn child, and what a doofus he was. To hope that a child’s father would disappear so that he, an adult, a responsible mayor and soon-to-be father, could have one afternoon with his own dad, alleged dad, not even …“Oh for fuck’s sakes,” Hosea said again. He waved to Knute and then to the doctor who had left Knute standing, soaked, in the sunlight, and was now walking east down Main towards the hospital. And was that, dammit, it was, thought Hosea, it was Bill Quinn trotting along beside the doctor like a self-righteous St. Bernard on a life-saving mountain trek. Hosea slowed down and drove up beside the doctor and the dog.

“Hello there,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get rid of that dog for weeks now, and here he is again …”

“Ah, Hosea,” said the doctor, ignoring his comments, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” Hosea stopped his car and the doctor came over and leaned in through Hosea’s open window. “Oh, nice belt,” said the doctor. Hosea was about to say “Thanks, it’s a Native American blah blah blah,” but the doctor said, “So, this is the thing. I’ve had an offer from a big hospital in Indianapolis, it’s a teaching hospital with a good reputation, it’s in a great neighbourhood, it’s altogether a great offer, and the money, of course, is much better, not that that’s your fault or anybody’s, it’s just fact.”