Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“Well, sure,” said Knute, “okay,” and then they laughed for a while thinking of themselves as farmers and Johnny came back into the living room with some snacks. Eventually Knute remembered that S.F. and Jo and Bill Quinn were sleeping in the car. Johnny threw them out at four in the morning, said he had to pack. Knute drove Max and Jo home. Bill Quinn went with them. And then S.F. woke up and said she was going with the dog, so that night she slept over at Max’s. And Knute went home alone.

Knute slept until noon the next day without S.F. around to wake her up, and when she went into the kitchen there was a note that said:

Dear Knutie, S.F. will stay over at Max and Jo’s for the day. Tom says he doesn’t mind staying alone for the afternoon while we’re at work. And Hosea called, would like you to pick up more cockroach spray and give the petunias one more squirt on your way into the office. Love, D.

P.S. I know about yesterday, so relax. And what’s this about S.F. having a dog? I’m having a few people from Friends of Houdini over tonight.

She had written something else about someone in town stepping on a rusty nail and having a strange reaction to the tetanus shot, but she had crossed most of it out, and written “Oh never mind” underneath.

Knute peeked into Tom’s room and asked him if there was anything he needed before she left. He shook his head and smiled. She told him about Max and her and S.F. moving into Johnny’s house and looking after his farm, and he gave her the thumbs-up sign and said, “That’s great.” He seemed short of breath and she asked him if he was okay and he nodded. She kissed him good-bye and left for work.

When Knute got to the office Hosea was there and he said, “Did you find him?”

“Yup,” answered Knute. “At Johnny’s house.” And then she told him about the plan to move in with Max and he, too, was very happy about it.

“How’s Tom doing today?” he asked, and Knute said she didn’t know.

“It’s hard to know anything about him these days,” she said. Hosea told her that they had the smallest town, they had fifteen hundred people, as soon as Johnny left, anyway. The count would happen in the next day or two and that would be that. The Prime Minister would be coming to Algren on July first.

“Well then,” said Knute, “all is well.”

“Quite,” said Hosea, formally, and kind of sadly, and Knute put up her hand for him to slap, you know, high-five, but he said, “Oh, you’re going?” And he waved back.

Which was one of the funnier things that had happened to Knute in a while.

Hosea sat at his desk and felt the warm midday sun on his back. As randomly as I was conceived, he thought, as randomly as I was named, as randomly as … he heard a horn honking under his window and he got up and walked over to have a look. “Hey, Hosea!” shouted Johnny Dranger. “I’m leaving! I’m gone!” Hosea waved and yelled, “Good luck! Come back alive! And send me a postcard from time to time!”

“I will!” yelled Johnny. “So long!” And he was gone.

The phone rang and Hosea hoped it would be Lorna. “Hello?” he said.

“May I speak to Mayor Hosea Funk, please?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“Speaking,” said Hosea.

“Ah,” said the woman, “I’m calling from the Prime Minister’s Office. Your town, as you know, is one of Canada’s smallest and is one of the contestants in our smallest town competition.”

“Yeah, yes, I know that,” said Hosea, and added, “thanks.”

“One of our census people will be in your town tomorrow to do an official, uh, count, and who shall we tell her will be the person to contact when she arrives?”

“Oh,” said Hosea, “that could be me.”

“Yourself?” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Hosea. He coughed. “Yes, myself.”

“Very good then,” said the woman. “And the address of your office being?”

“Office being?” said Hosea.

“Yes,” said the woman.

“Oh,” said Hosea, “okay.” And he gave her the address.

“Our counter should be there at ten o’clock, Mayor Funk, is that convenient for you? Mayor Funk? Hello, Mayor Funk? Mayor Funk!”

“Oh yes,” said Hosea. “Sure thing. Thank-you.”

Hosea hung up the phone and two seconds later heard the scream of Algren’s one and only ambulance as it ripped through the torpor of the day. Before Hosea could make it to the window, the ambulance had passed and the street was, once again, as dead as a ghost town.

Hosea ran out of his office and towards the hospital. The siren had stopped and Hosea could hear birds singing and an airplane flying directly behind him, maybe it was a crop duster, why was it following him? And a stampede of horses. Or was it his heart? One kid stopped playing in his yard and looked up at the strange sight of Hosea Funk sprinting down the sidewalk like an escaped parolee, and a couple of women visiting outside stared at him and shook their heads. “That Hosea Funk,” one said, but Hosea, by that time, was nearing the hospital, and then he was there, running up the stairs, then through the front door, towards the emergency room, and shouting, “No! No! No!”

Tom lay on the stretcher surrounded by machines and cords. Dr. François was pounding on his chest and checking levels on one of the machines. Nurse Barnes was injecting Tom with something and another nurse was standing next to the doctor, watching a machine and opening up a small package. A third nurse was on the phone to another hospital and Hosea heard her say, “… massive cardiac …” and then some numbers. Then the doctor speaking to the nurse beside him, softly, and … Tom, just lying there. The doctor turned around and saw Hosea standing in the doorway and said, “For God’s sake …” and turned back to Tom. After a few seconds, the doctor said to Hosea, “Find Dory,” and then he and the nurses surrounded Tom, and Tom disappeared inside them.

Twenty minutes later, Dory and Knute stood in the waiting room, waiting for the news. The doctor was sure Tom was going to die, there was no way he could survive that much trauma to the heart, and, in fact, Tom had been dead for a minute or so, but came back to life.

“If he’d been taken to Winnipeg right off the bat would he survive?” asked Dory.

“He wouldn’t have made it to Winnipeg,” the doctor answered. He told them that Tom had called the hospital himself before he had the heart attack, saying he was feeling very strange, and when they got to him he had been dead, for that minute.

So, there they were. Tom was on a lot of morphine and lay there with his eyes closed, but Dory and Knute squeezed his hands and kissed him and said good-bye. They were in shock, complete shock. Hosea came in for about a minute, that’s all the doctor would allow him, and he touched Tom’s arm and looked at Tom. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” Then he was asked to leave the room.

But then things got weird. Tom wasn’t dying. Knute and Dory could tell Dr. François was getting sort of nervous because he probably figured he should have transferred him to Winnipeg after all. Not that the doctor wanted Tom to die, he just seemed a little confused. So Tom remained alive and eventually Knute even left to get some coffee for herself and Dory. The doctor came in and by then a few doctors had come from other towns, and one from Winnipeg, and they huddled around Tom, speaking in hushed tones, telling Knute and Dory that they had to admit they were puzzled. That the heart had sustained so much damage, they didn’t know how it was capable of functioning. Knute and Dory were still so overwhelmed that they just nodded and stared at Tom and, well, just waited.