“What are you doing?”
“I’m resting.”
“Don’t rest.”
“Summer Feelin’,” Knute said. “Do you think it’s kind of selfish of Max just to come and go whenever he pleases? Do you wonder why he hasn’t come to see you at all and you’re already four years old?”
“I dunno,” S.F. said. She shrugged.
Knute sat up and S.F. pulled her off the bed. It was time to make another heart-smart low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol, low-excitement meal, probably of chicken breasts and rice.
“Oh, Knutie?” Dory called from some cubbyhole she was painting in another room.
Oh no, thought Knute. Another morbid anecdote. “Yeah?”
“Did you hear that old Mr. Leander Hamm died?”
“The guy with the hat?” Knute called out.
“The guy with the hat. Yes. But he was very old. It’s a blessing, really.”
“Well then!” Knute yelled. “Bless us each and every one and pass the whiskey.”
“I just thought you might be interested!” said Dory. “For Pete’s sake!”
“Hey, Mom!” Knute yelled. “Why don’t you crawl out of that hole and come and hang out in the kitchen with us while I make supper.”
“I’ll be right there,” Dory yelled back. “Put the coffee on!”
“Will do,” said Knute, chasing S.F. into the kitchen with wild eyes and singing into the back of her neck, quietly, “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s given up his bed, he’s said all that he’s said, away his life has sped, his body’s left his head, give us his daily bread,” and Summer Feelin’ had to laugh in spite of herself. Thank God, thought Knute.
Lorna was on her way home. Everything had gone quite well, thought Hosea, very well really, except for the end when she had said, “Oh, Hosea, you know I think about living with you, having a nice easy life together, you know, just … being together.”
Nice? Easy? Could life be that way, Hosea thought, nice and easy?
Could it? And the two of them together? Obviously she meant in Algren. How could the mayor of the smallest town up and move to the big city? Well, he couldn’t, thought Hosea. And after she’d said what she’d said, Hosea had pawed his chest a few times, and said, “Oh you.” “Oh you?” Lorna had said. “Oh you? That’s all you can say, Hosea? Oh you?” But he hadn’t meant it that way. He hadn’t meant it to sound like Oh you, you’re such a silly kid. But oh you, oh you, oh YOU, my Lorna, my love. Hosea understood how Lorna might have misunderstood. He’d mumbled it into his tugging hand and looked down when he’d said it and had wanted to carry her back to his car, to his house, their house, to their bed, to bring the exercise bike out into the open and have Lorna’s sexy, lively colourful stuff all over the place, instead of sad things like Euphemia’s tablecloths and ancient jars of Dippity-Do, and forget about his stupid plan and live in honesty, the two of them, day to day, with July first coming and going like just another hot summer memory and not a looming deadline.
God knows how long it would be before Lorna came for another visit, or called to invite him over there, which was always exciting to think about but when he actually got there, to the city, to her apartment, to the cafés and bars and theatres and universities and health food stores and bookstores, he always felt like an idiot, like a big goofy farmboy on a school field trip, riding a big orange bus that said Algren Municipality Elementary School, and Lorna saying “Hi, hi there, how are you” to people he had never met, and introducing him and should he stick out his hand, and is this rough-looking guy hugging Lorna because he’s what they call New Age, or … Or the time he had driven to the city for that Emmylou Harris concert and his car had started on fire at a red light. He remembered running into a little grocery store and asking to use the telephone and the guy said, “No, no, sorry no.” Then, when he got back to his burning car, some kids in the neighbourhood had pelted him with hard, wet snowballs, laughing and yelling at him, “Let it burn! Let it burn!” No, he much preferred to have Lorna in his little house in Algren, baking cinnamon buns, just the two of them. And then, oh stupid me, he thought, that’s just what Lorna had said she wanted, too, and he’d said, “Oh you,” which she decided he meant as Oh you, that’s a crazy romantic notion that really has no place in our lives, when he’d meant the opposite, and wanted the very same thing, but how could he tell her Algren didn’t have room for her? She would have to be counted and he didn’t have enough dying people to level it off. How could someone tell somebody else something like that? Could Lorna wait until after July first? Hosea shook his head slowly. She would have to, oh please.
Hosea had tried to get her attention but the bus just drove away under a sky the colour of glue and Lorna stared straight ahead. Hosea picked up a piece of hard snow and chucked it at her window and smiled and waved, but she had looked at him with one of those withering looks, a look that said, Chucking hard pieces of snow against my section of bus window will not thaw my frozen heart.
Hosea walked over to the chunk of snow, the one he had chucked at Lorna’s window, and looked at it. The snow around it was dusty from the exhaust fumes of the bus. Hosea gently kicked the chunk of snow towards the sidewalk. He walked up to it and kicked it again, a little harder, to get over the ridge of snow that lined the sidewalk. Up and over, there it went. Hosea continued kicking the chunk of snow towards home. It was getting smaller and smaller. He hoped he could get it home before it disappeared. Gentle kicks, but long distances. Scoop it from underneath with the top of your foot. That was the trick. He shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. What if somebody saw him, the mayor of Algren, kicking a piece of snow down the sidewalk? Well, it wasn’t far to his house, and besides he’d done it as a boy, with Tom. They’d pick their chunks, inspecting them closely to make sure they were pretty much exactly the same size and weight, and then home they’d go. When they got home, if their chunks of snow hadn’t disappeared or been kicked so far they got lost, they’d play hockey with one of them until it did disappear and then, for a big laugh, they’d continue to play with it. It wasn’t there but they’d play with it anyway, taking slapshots, scoring goals, having it dropped by imaginary referees at centre ice, skating like crazy down the ice to catch the rebound off their sticks. Often, they would argue about goals, the puck being offside, illegal penalty shots, all that stuff, and they’d have huge hockey fights, throwing their woollen mittens down on the ground and trying to pull each other’s jackets off over their heads.
One day Euphemia came out of the house with an empty whipping cream carton. “Here, you boys,” she’d said. “Why don’t you use this?” And she had put it down in the snow and stomped on it once for all she was worth and then picked the flattish thing up and tossed it over to them. They’d used it for a while, and Euphemia stood washing dishes looking out at them in the back lane and smiling, and then they’d gone to the front of the house, to the street, where Euphemia wasn’t as sure to watch them, and went back to their imaginary puck.
It was Sunday. Algren was dead. Hosea slowly made his way home. As he walked past the back of the Wagon Wheel Café, Mrs. Cherniski, the owner of the café, poked her head out of the kitchen and said, “Hey, Hosea!” Hosea’s head snapped up like a fish on a line, but not before he made a mental note of where his chunk of ice had stopped.
“Hello, Mrs. Cherniski, how goes the battle?” said Hosea.
“So that is you, I was wondering,” said Mrs. Cherniski, “with that hat and everything. Looks like old Leander gave you his hat before he passed on. Nice of him. But I’d have it cleaned, if I was you.”