Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

He pressed play on his tape deck. Then he changed his mind and pushed the eject button.

Knute ran until she was too tired to run, and then she walked. She thought maybe she’d walk to Winnipeg, to Marilyn’s, or maybe all the way down the Trans-Canada Highway to Vancouver. She walked into the ditch and up to a barbed-wire fence surrounding a field. She lifted the top wire and climbed through the fence and then she walked to a little tuft of bluish long grass in the middle of the dirt and lay down.

Caroline Russo, thought Hosea. Caroline Russo was pregnant with Johnny’s baby. Wild Caroline Russo with the eldorado-coloured lunch kit and the leather flask full of Dr. Pepper. If she and the baby were still alive, they’d be the kind of family that would sail around the world on a homemade boat, and let the kids go naked, and Johnny would have a beard … they’d laugh a lot … Hosea pulled into Johnny’s driveway. Johnny was standing there in his doorway smiling and holding two bottles of beer, like he’d been expecting Hosea. “Am I out?” he asked Hosea.

Hosea smiled. “No, no,” he said. “You’re still in. Soon you’ll be Algren’s new fire chief.”

“Hmmmm,” said Johnny.

“It’s a paid position,” said Hosea. “No more of this volunteering.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Johnny. “Want a beer?”

Johnny and Hosea moved the picnic table into a shady part of the yard and sat down to drink their beer. “I’m glad you stopped by, Hosea,” said Johnny. “’Cause I’m leaving this place day after tomorrow.”

“For how long?” asked Hosea.

“For good. I don’t want to die here.”

“But you’re not that old,” said Hosea.

“I know,” said Johnny. “I don’t want to die here, you know, I don’t want to live here like I’m. Dead I don’t mind dying here, I just don’t want to die. Here do you know what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Hosea. “I didn’t know you hated it here.”

“I don’t,” said Johnny. “I don’t hate. It it’s fine.”

“You might not find another place you like any better,” said Hosea.

“That’s true,” said Johnny. “But I can have a look around anyway and. Besides, I can just keep. Moving I don’t have to stay put in one. Place there’s no reason for me to. Oh, don’t look so. Sad, Hose, it’s a good. Thing I’m excited about moving. On I’m looking forward to it.”

“But what are you going to do while you move around?” asked Hosea. “What about your farm?”

“I’m gonna put out fires,” said Johnny. “There are fires burning out of control all over the. World I’ll get fed, and put up in some place, and I’ll just fight fires all over, until I’ve had. Enough or until my lungs give out.” Hosea stared at Johnny. “And there’ll be other things to do, too, Hosea, don’t. Worry can I tell you something?”

“Yeah,” said Hosea. “Of course.”

“I want to sleep with women,” said Johnny. “Women from all. Over I want to have. Sex, you know? Just a lot of good, happy. Sex I’m tired of Caroline’s memory hanging over. Me I want to remember her, but I don’t want it to stop me from doing stuff anymore.”

Hosea cleared his throat and looked at Johnny gravely. “Do you really think you’ll be happy just moving around and screwing all sorts of women?” At that point both Johnny and Hosea began to laugh.

“Yeah,” said Johnny, “I really do.” Hosea was shaking with laughter now and Johnny could barely speak. “Yeah,” he managed to say, “I think I will be very happy doing that for a while.” Hosea was laughing too hard to say anything but he lifted his beer up to Johnny’s, against the pink sky, and they clanked their bottles together, and he thought he heard Johnny say, “To Caroline.” Or maybe he had said something else entirely and Hosea had only imagined that Johnny had said her name.

Eventually Knute woke up and decided to go home. First she sat in that blue tuft and examined the grass marks on her bare legs and then she wondered is it better to try to understand life or is it better not to? Which makes you happier? She remembered a book of Dory’s that said the mystery of life is one with the clarity and she thought, Yeah, okay, makes sense. Fighting and anger don’t necessarily drive a person away. And love and friendship don’t necessarily keep a person from going away. She had S.F. but she was losing Max. She knew she would in the end. She just knew it.

“Are you drunk?” asked Lorna.

“Maybe,” said Hosea. “I was drinking beer with Johnny. In the sun. A lot of beer, I don’t know how many, but a lot. Good beer, though, very good beer. We had a good time, just sitting there at his little picnic table and—”

“Hey, Hosea!” shouted Lorna over the phone. “Snap out of it. I get the picture.”

“Okay,” said Hosea. He was writing the name Johnny Dranger in the Soon To Be Leaving Algren column and Veronica Epp and three babies in the Moved Away column. “Okay,” he said again to Lorna. He slapped a hand over his right eye and tried to focus on the page. “I wanted to tell you what we were doing.”

“You were drinking beer in the sun, you already told me that. Call me when you’re sober, Hose, and please don’t make a habit of getting hammered with losers like Johnny Dranger. You’re going to be a father soon.”

“That’s right,” said Hosea, slurring his words.

“Man, that beer should have been mine,” Lorna continued. “I wouldn’t mind having a cold beer, it’s so fucking hot, and I’m so itchy, do you think one would hurt? Hosea? Hosea!”

“We were celebrating, Lorna,” said Hosea. He’d put his head down on the desk and had the phone resting on the side of his head so he could still hear her. His eyes were closed. His hands dangled down by the floor. “I’m so happy. Everything’s just … so good. I’ve got fifteen hundred. I’ve got it right.”

“Really?” asked Lorna. “How?”

“Johnny’s leaving,” Hosea said. “He wants to meet women.”

“Really?” asked Lorna.

“Yup,” said Hosea happily. “And fight fires all over the world.” Hosea could hear Lorna laughing at the other end. His lips slid into a kind of half smile. “Do you love me?” he whispered, and the phone fell off his head and onto the desk, and Hosea was sound asleep.

Knute went home. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue, dark and soft and warm, and she could hear people talking in their houses because all the windows were open, and she could smell barbecues, and maybe a bit of rain on its way, and she could hear a lawn mower off in the distance and a car with no muffler tearing down deserted Main Street, looking for a race, and the crickets were starting up but sounded a bit rusty, and in front of her house, on the road, was a small woollen mitten covered in dust. It was S.F.’s so she picked it up and took it in.

Dory and Summer Feelin’ were playing Junior Monopoly and eating ice cream. They didn’t think anything was wrong. “Hi, Mommy!” said S.F.

“Oh, Knute,” said Dory, “Max said you’d be late. There’s some pizza left on the counter if you’re hungry.”

She gave S.F. a kiss and said thanks to Dory. Then she walked into Tom’s room. He knew she was coming. He was awake and was wearing his glasses. Knute closed the door quietly and sat on the edge of his bed and began to cry. “I didn’t tell them,” said Tom. “They don’t know what happened.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Max told me.”

“He told you? Max came in here and talked to you?”

“No. I got up and went down and helped him clean up the glass and I put some hydrogen peroxide on his cuts. S.F. played outside the whole time with the neighbour kids.”