Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

Hosea tried to make himself comfortable in the waiting room. The doctor gave him updates on Tom’s condition, but mostly Tom was just still alive. “Still alive?” Hosea would ask, and the doctor would nod and go back into Tom’s room. At one point Dory came out and asked Hosea if he would sit with Tom while she went to the cafeteria to get some more coffee. Knute had left to get Max and Summer Feelin’ and bring them to the hospital. Hosea sat down next to Tom. Suddenly, without opening his eyes, Tom whispered, “What time is the count?” Hosea, startled, grabbed at the front of his shirt and cleared his throat. He looked at Tom, and said, “What? What did you say, Tom?”

Tom, exhausted by the effort he had made to speak, began again. “What … time …” He took a deep breath, and then was quiet for a long time.

Hosea held his hand and squeezed. “… Is the count?” he whispered in Tom’s ear. Tom nodded once.

“At ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” said Hosea. “They called me today from Ottawa … but how did you know … how do you know about the count?” Tom didn’t say anything. He’d heard it all the other night, every word, thought Hosea. He knows the Prime Minister is my father. He knows what’s going on.

“Tom,” he whispered, “you don’t—”

Just then the doctor came into the room with Dory and said to Hosea, “Okay, Hose, let’s not tire him out,” and Hosea nodded and went back to the waiting room.

Tom stayed alive all night, although he had developed a fever. Dory sat in a chair beside his bed, and held his hand and put small flakes of ice between his lips from time to time. Knutie slept on another bed in Tom’s room, Max took S.F. home and tried to console her, doctors and nurses walked in and out quietly, adjusting levels, writing down information, and Hosea curled up as best he could on a sweaty vinyl couch in the lobby of the hospital, where he spent the night alone and dreaming.

He was dead. Right after he died, he said, “I don’t want to be put into a box and buried in the dirt,” so they pumped him full of helium and tied a steel cable to his ankle and cranked him up into the sky so he could float around the world and check things out, without getting lost, and losing Algren. He checked out a Mexican circus and New York City and lost tribes and a few hundred wars and a housing project in New Orleans. And then he felt a gentle touch, a hand on his shoulder. He had a short-wave radio with him, propped up on his stomach, and he lay on his back and floated for a while over mountains somewhere in the world and listened to police calls on his radio, and then Knutie’s voice on the other end saying, “We need you here in Algren, we’re bringing you back,” and the cable jerked on his ankle and the short-wave radio fell off his stomach and they started cranking him back down to earth. Iris Cherniski was squirting a little WD-40 into the crank machine and saying, “That’s it, that’s it, easy does it,” and Max was there with a microphone and holding S.F. in his arms, saying, “Perfect two-point landing, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying with CorpseAir, we hope you enjoyed your flight.” And there were Peej and Euphemia playing concentration on the curb, smiling shyly at each other and ignoring Hosea entirely, and then there was John Baert, standing beside Euphemia, asking if he could play, and Hosea tried to undo the steel cable from his ankle and go over there, “Those’re my folks,” he said to Max. “I gotta get this thing off. Today’s the day. Help me get this thing off.”

“But, Hosea,” said his Aunt Minty, who had just showed up, “you’re still pumped full of helium, if we take it off you’ll float away.”

“Then empty me!” yelled Hosea. “C’mon, help me, Minty!”

“Oh, Hosie,” said Euphemia, finally looking up, “relax, sweetheart, you’re dead.” She smiled sweetly at Peej and John Baert and said, “He’s so dead …”

“Tough shit!” yelled Hosea. “So are you, get this damn thing off me!”

And Minty said, “Well, we could take the head off and let some of the pressure out, but I don’t know …” and she disappeared, and in her place was Lorna. She put her hand out to Hosea to touch him and she said, “You’re so round, you’re so bloated, like me, look,” and Dory brought coffee out for everyone and Hosea could hear Dory say, “I like my stories happy, the sadness comes creeping out of the cracks in the story like blood, happy stories are the saddest.” And then it began to snow and Max said, “Excellent, Dory! Excellent!”

In the morning Hosea asked if he could see Tom. Dory was asleep in the other bed now and Knutie had gone into the hall to make some phone calls to friends and relatives of Tom. Hosea passed Knute in the hallway, at the payphone, and he was about to say something, but Knute smiled wearily and put her hand up to stop him. “Hello?” she said. “Uncle Jack?” Hosea smiled back and nodded. He pointed to Tom’s room, but Knute had turned her back to him and was talking to Uncle Jack. Hosea went into Tom’s room and stood beside him. He wanted to tell Tom he didn’t have to stay alive if he didn’t want to, if it was too hard, but he knew he couldn’t say these words out loud, not with Dory there, not with the way things were. That is, the way life was, the way life was that precluded us from saying things like that out loud. And besides, what he meant was that Tom didn’t have to do this for him, for his cockeyed plan to see his father. But instead, he leaned over and whispered, “Tom, I’m going to my office now.” He’d wanted to say something more, something poignant and earth-shattering, words that conveyed the love he felt for Tom, and the gratitude. Instead he said, “So long, Tom,” and turned to go. But then he heard Tom’s voice. “Time,” he said, not moving his lips so it sounded like tie. Hosea stopped and looked at Tom. “Tie,” he said again.

“Time?” said Hosea. “Well, uh, the time is 9:45, Tom.” He cleared his throat and looked over at Dory who was waking up in the other bed. “It’s 9:45,” he said again.

“Okay, thanks,” said Dory. “My goodness, I slept too long. How is he?” Hosea was about to answer her, then noticed that she was talking to the doctor who had come into the room and was standing behind him, writing something again, and so he mumbled a garbled good-bye and left Dory and the doctor to discuss Tom’s condition.

Hosea walked out into the beautiful day to meet his census-taker, and do the count. The counter’s name was Anita and she told Hosea she had a sister who was also an official counter and was doing a count somewhere in Nova Scotia as they spoke. “A contender,” she said. The two of them walked the dusty streets of Algren, knocking on doors, getting information from the neighbours of people who weren’t home, and referring to Hosea’s notebook. Anita raised her eyebrows when she saw the orange Hilroy scribbler and said, “Geez, Mr. Funk, you want this bad, don’t you?”

You don’t know the half of it, lady, were words that came to Hosea’s mind, but he smiled and said, “Well, we’d all love to see the Prime Minister come to Algren. It would be a special day for all of us.”

“Well, then,” said Anita, “let’s hope this one’s a promise he keeps.” She laughed and said, “I’m kidding.”

And Hosea laughed, too, and said, “Good one.”

That evening it was on the news. Algren was the winner with an uncanny fifteen hundred exactly. How did it happen? It doesn’t matter, it did. It was the last item on the news, the feelgood piece to put people to bed with, to leave them with the impression that not all was as bad as it seemed.

Tom died that night, too. His last words were, “Where is …” and something Dory couldn’t understand, but sounded like “… horses.”