“Have you got an aversion to family gatherings, Mr. Funk? Or are you afraid someone will steal your truck if you leave it alone for a minute? You know, I could have my boy Thomas watch it for you, ha ha ha. Like New York City. You know, where you pay a little boy from the ghetto a nickel to make sure nobody nicks your automobile, or strips the hubcaps—”
“I was just going in,” Mr. Funk growled. “Thank-you for your consideration.”
From that day forward, Mr. Funk dutifully entered Euphemia’s house along with his wife and the kids and set himself up in the dining room as the king of crokinole. He taught the kids, including Hosea and Tom, the combination shot, the straight-to-the-gonads shot, the right-between-the-eyes shot, and the triple lutz. It was the perfect appointment for him. He could avoid conversation and, at the same time, could release his frustration and self-righteous indignation each and every time he curled his middle finger to his thumb and let fire another crokinole rock.
Euphemia and Minty and Mrs. Funk drank coffee in the kitchen and talked and laughed and the words “oh well,” “one more cup,” “what’s the rush” were always punctuated with the vicious crack of a crokinole piece from the next room.
Well, thought Hosea as he walked along kicking his piece of ice, she must have done more than handstands on kitchen chairs. He was just about home now and Lorna’s face came pushing and shoving into his thoughts and the picture of Euphemia upside down churning her long thin legs in the air was gone. Hello, Lorna, I’m sorry, Hosea said to the image of her face in his mind. His piece of ice had made it and just before he went into his house he gave it one last kick up and over his little fence into his neighbour’s yard.
“Hey, Hosea, didja hear?” He whirled around to face his other neighbour, Jeannie, who had appeared on her front steps from out of nowhere.
“What’s that, Jeannie?”
“Veronica Epp,” she said. “She’s had her triplets.”
“Oh?” said Hosea.
“That’s right, three,” said Jeannie. “And they’re all okay. All boys. The last one had to be delivered C-section, you know, but he’s okay, too. Can you imagine giving birth vaginally to not one but two babies, and then on top of all that having to be cut open to have the third?” Jeannie shook her head and stared at the ground.
“No. No, I can’t,” said Hosea.
“Who could?” muttered Jeannie, still staring at the ground and shaking her head. Hosea was about to say Well, can’t be easy or something like that and go inside but Jeannie wasn’t finished. “They were going to rush her to the city, but, you know, they didn’t. No time.”
“Ah,” said Hosea. “Well.”
“So Veronica says seeing as how she went to so much work to have these three babies, she should at least be able to name one of them. Makes sense to me, right, but you know Gord her husband always does the naming, he’s that kind of a guy. And he likes names like Ed and Chuck and Dirk and Todd, you know, names that sound like farts. So Gord says, Well, maybe one of them. I heard all this from Rita, you know Rita from the labour pool, she works with Dory, Tom’s wife?”
“Hmmmm,” said Hosea.
“So he says, Well, maybe one of them, right? And she says, Then again, maybe I should name them all, seeing as I’m the one who says their names the most, like all day every day and I like to say names I like, if I’m going to say them over and over again, she says to Gord, right, according to Rita. And Gord says, No way, you can name one, the one with the slow start because he’ll probably turn out to be a mama’s boy, anyway. Okay, so this makes Veronica really mad, right, and she says What do you mean by that? And he says Well, you know, kids with lung problems, wheezing and clinging and skinny, the slow starter had some lung problems, the doctor says. But that’s all taken care of, she says, and she’s really mad, right, and tells Gord to leave the hospital.”
“Right,” said Hosea.
“In the meantime, she names all three of the boys, fills out the forms for vital stats and gives them to the nurse to mail to the city and get this, Hosea, their names are … are you ready?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Hosea.
“Their names are, now let’s see if I remember, their names are Finbar, you know after that saint of lost souls or whatever he is, Callemachus, after I don’t know who, somebody Greek, and Indigo. Like the colour, you know, of jeans?”
Hosea was quiet for a moment. Jeannie was staring at him with her mouth open in one of those frozen poses of suspended laughter and shock where the one suspended waits for the other to twig and then they both collapse in hysterics. Hosea didn’t understand this type of gesture, however, and said, “Um, is there more?” His hand moved to his chest and he managed to tug at his jacket with his Thinsulate gloves.
“No, Hosea, that’s it. I thought it was funny. You know, Gord will freak when he hears their names, of course he’ll probably illegally rename them or something or refuse to call them by name at all, but Rita told me—”
“Wait,” said Hosea. “It is, you know? Now that I think of it, it’s very funny. Very funny.” Hosea tried to laugh. “Ih, ih. Boy, thanks for telling me, Jeannie, that’s rich, Finbar, Callesomething, and, uh … well, good-bye.”
“Say,” said Jeannie, “hold on, where’d you get that hat? Isn’t that whatsisname’s, the—”
Hosea let the door slam behind him.
Hosea hung up his jacket and laid his gloves and Leander’s old hat on the bench in the hallway. He heard the fridge heave and shudder. The kitchen lights flickered for a second while the fridge sucked every available bit of energy in the house. Hosea looked inside his fridge. Half an onion, dry and curled at the edges, a tub of expired sour cream, and the leftovers of the last meal he had shared with Lorna. There’s something wrong with my fridge, he thought. All this energy for a rotting onion and love’s leftovers. The phone rang. Lorna, thought Hosea. He picked up the phone and said hello.
“Jeannie here,” said Jeannie. “One more thing. Apparently the Epps aren’t thrilled with Dr. François. They say Veronica should have been transferred to the city and they’re just lucky all three boys survived. So, are you there?”
“Yes,” said Hosea.
“So anyway, Rita told me they might sue and Dr. François is getting riled by the whole thing, because the point is, of course, that the boys are all okay. He says even if he had transferred her, the problems she was having would have occurred in the city, too, and the procedure would have been exactly the same. So … anyway.”
“Okay, then, thanks,” said Hosea.
“Hey, by the way,” said Jeannie, “when do you find out about Baert’s visit? Is he coming?”
“Yes,” said Hosea, giving his middle finger to the receiver. “Well, maybe. I don’t know at this point. Good-bye.” And he hung up the phone. Well, he thought to himself. Hmmm … if Dr. François is getting riled he just might leave Algren. He’s always hated it here, after all. That would be one less, let’s see, that might work … and Hosea went through the numbers dance in his head. But how could the hospital function without a doctor? Well maybe it could, just until after the Prime Minister’s visit, thought Hosea. Obviously he had work to do. Tomorrow he would have to drive out to Johnny Dranger’s farm and tell him he was outside the town limits, again. He would call Lorna and beg her to forgive him for his stupid remarks and maybe he could even explain what it was he was trying to do. That he had a good reason for not asking her to move in with him, and that very soon, in the fall, after the Prime Minister’s visit, it would all be different. And he’d have to ask Knute to do something about that black dog. And check into renovating that old feed mill, and painting the water tower. And he’d have to ask her if she’d heard from Max. Fair enough. He could relax. He poured himself a glass of wine and put on his new Emmylou Harris tape. He sat down on the couch and looked around his house. He looked at his tapered fingers and then touched the faint scar tissue on his right palm, but this time he didn’t feel a thing. No tingling, no pain. He rubbed it harder and felt a small ping. Good. Hosea raised his glass and thought, To the babies, Indigo and whatever their names are. And he had a sip of the wine. He remembered his exercise bike, hidden behind the furnace. What was it that mattered most in a man’s life? He just didn’t know. And he didn’t know how to find out and he didn’t know if ever he did find out he would know what it was he was finding out. Hosea had another sip of wine from his glass. Now his hand was on his forehead. Okay, Hosea, he thought, time to pull your wagons in a circle, time to cut bait, time to, whatever, something, for Christ’s sake, the tears were streaming down his face now as Emmylou’s voice, pure and high, settled in around him, sweet as mother’s milk.