Guy Vanderhaeghe - Man Descending

Big Paul and Tollefson began to search the bushes behind the cowsheds for calves when it became clear, after an hour, that the storm was not going to abate. They panted over deadfalls, forced their way through blinds of saskatoon and chokecherry bushes, slogged through the low spots where the puddles lay thick and sluggish, a porridge of ice crystals.

Within half an hour Tollefson’s flannel shirt stuck to his back, heavy and damp with a sickly sweat. Thirty minutes later he had the feeling that his legs were attempting to walk out from underneath him. They felt as light and airy as balsa wood; it was only by an exertion of great will that he made them carry him. At some point, however, the cold gnawed through the gristle of his resolve and concentration, his mind wandered, his legs did what they wished – and folded under him. Tollefson was surprised to find himself kneeling in mud and slush, the wet seeping through his pant-legs and draining slowly into his boots, while he listened to his heart ticking over, and felt the scar blaze on his back.

“I found him,” Big Paul would tell the beer parlour crowd later, “else he’d have froze stiff as a tinker’s dink. It was just behind my barley bin, about a quarter-mile from where he says his legs gave out. I guess the old bugger got pooped out and sat down for a minute, and then his legs cramped with the cold and he couldn’t get up. When I seen him he was just a lump of snow by the granary skids. He must have had horseshoes up his ass, because I could have easy missed him. I looked twice, mind you.

“But as I was saying, I saw this bump and first thing I says to myself is, ‘That’s another christly calf down and sure as Carter’s got liver pills he’s dead, son of a bitch.’ I nearly crapped my drawers when I got close up and saw it wasn’t no calf but the wife’s uncle. I hadn’t seen him for an hour, but I’d figured he’d got cold and went back to the house.

“He didn’t have a thing left in him. He was on his side with an arm over his face to keep the sleet off. He could have been sleeping. Didn’t hear me until I was practically standing on him.

“ ‘Hey!’ I hollered. ‘Hey!’ I figured he was tits up. I wasn’t too crazy about touching a dead man. But he wasn’t dead. ‘You found me,’ he says, real quiet. Then he takes his arm off his face. No teeth. He lost his teeth somewhere.

“ ‘You broke a leg, or what?’ I says. ‘Can you get up?’

“ ‘No, I can’t get up,’ he mumbles. ‘I’m beat.’ He didn’t talk so good without his teeth and he was so tired I could barely make out what he was saying. I yelled at him: ‘You broke a leg or had a heart attack or what?’

“ ‘I’m tired,’ he says. ‘My legs give up on me.’

“Now he’s old but he ain’t light, and I was thinking how the hell was I going to get him out of there? He seen I was wondering how I was going to pack his arse out of there. I couldn’t get a truck in there; she’d go down to the axles.

“ ‘Go hook the stoneboat to the Ford tractor,’ he says, ‘and pull me out of here.’ He had it all figured out. Of course, he had plenty of time, didn’t he?

“ ‘I got a pile of manure on it!’ I hollers. ‘I’ll have to throw it off first!’

“ ‘I can’t wait,’ he says. ‘I can’t feel my toes.’ Then he says, ‘You bring her in here and load me on. That Ford can pull a double load of b.s., can’t it?’ And he laughs. I tell you, I figure he was pretty far gone for him to say that. That’s pretty strong stuff for that old man. He’s a regular Bible-banger. I never heard him say so much as damn before that.

“So that’s how I dragged him out of there. Rolled him onto a pile of cow shit and pulled him up to the house. He just lay there with his arms flung out on either side, the sleet coming down in his face. He didn’t even try to cover up. I don’t think he cared for nothing at that point.”

Eric, who was seated across the table from Paul, said: “You say he crawled a half-mile? You ought to race him against Charlie’s kid,” he laughed, poking Charlie. “I was over to his place yesterday, and his rug rat can really rip. I’d put a dollar on him.”

“I paced it off next day,” Big Paul said, and his voice hinted at wonder. “That was what it was, just under a quarter-mile. And he gets the pension. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“How’s he now?” asked Charlie.

“Seems he’s okay. We brought him home from the hospital a week ago. He spends most of the day laying in bed, then he reads to the kid when he comes home from school. Reads him mostly Bible stories. The old bird ain’t nothing if he ain’t odd. Lydia thinks it helps the kid. He don’t do much at school.”

“Sounds just like his old man,” said Eric, “a regular little shit-disturber.”

“No,” said Big Paul, honesty itself, “he just don’t learn.”

“He won’t grow up to be a shit-disturber with a preacher in the house,” said Charlie, draining his glass.

“You ought to seen the kid,” Big Paul said, suddenly struck by the recollection. “The things he comes up with. The things he thinks of. The other day I come in from feeding the stock and Little Paul’s traipsing around the kitchen with a towel tied on his head and a piece of butcher’s tape stuck on his chin for a beard.

“ ‘Who the hell are you?’ I says.

“ ‘Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt,’ he says. Do you believe that? Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt.

“ ‘Well, lead the bastards over the nearest cliff,’ I says.” Big Paul winked at his companions and rubbed his palms on his knees. “ ‘Over the nearest cliff,’ I says,” he repeated, laughing.

“A preacher in the house,” said Eric, shaking his head. “That’s trouble. You know what they say about preachers. Hornier than a two-peckered owl is what my old man used to say. Watch that old bugger; he might preach the pants off the wife.”

“Keep him away from the goats,” snorted Charlie. “He’ll turn the cheese.”

Big Paul hated it when they teased him. Every time they started in on him he began to feel confused and helpless. “Ah, not him,” he said nervously, “for chrissakes show some respect. He’s her uncle, for crying out loud.”

“Any port in a storm,” said Eric, poking Charlie.

“He don’t like women much,” said Big Paul, “he never got married.” He paused, and, suddenly inspired, saw a solution. “You know,” he said, “if anything, he’s a little fruity. He’s got fruity ways. Irons his own shirts. Cleans his fingernails every day before dinner. Queer, eh?”

“That reminds me,” said Charlie. “Did you ever hear the one about the priest and the altar boy?”

“What?” said Big Paul sharply.

Tollefson’s four volumes of Bible Tales for Children were twenty years old. He had bought them for his own edification weeks after his conversion at a Pentecostal meeting he had been taken to by a widow who had thoughts of marriage. She never landed that fish, but Jesus did.

Tollefson bought the books for two reasons. He admired the bright illustrations, particularly the angels who were sweetness itself; and he thought that in those children’s books the great mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection would be so simply and obviously stated that his perplexities on those matters would evaporate. He found they helped.

Now the first volume lay open on the scarlet counterpane that covered Tollefson’s bed and Little Paul was huddled beside him, his head drawn into his bony shoulders, his face intent.

“But why did God ask Abraham to do that?” the boy demanded, his voice much too loud for the narrow bedroom.

“Can’t you wait for nothing?” said Tollefson. “The book’ll say. It’ll all come out in the end.” The old man resumed reading, his words muffled and moist because his lost teeth had not been found.