All right, I’m up. I’m up. I’m up! I’ll fight Tyson. I’ll fight Ali, I’ll fight, that’s it, I’m fighting, thought Hosea. Cassius Clay. I could change my name, he thought. Hosea Ali. Mohammed Funk. Mo Funk. Hosea sighed. Lorna, he thought. Lorna Funk. Lorna Funk, Lorna Funk. He was alone. “Listen to me,” he said out loud. The telephone rang. “I got it,” said Hosea. The phone quit after one ring. Hosea sighed again. And got up to make some coffee.
First thing that morning, after exercising, he was off to see Johnny Dranger. He would just tell it like it was. Lay it on the table. Let Johnny know he was out again. I’m sorry, Johnny, he’d say. There’s been yet another mix-up at the top. They say your farm is outside the town limits of Algren. Johnny wouldn’t be happy about it, he knew. Johnny had one passion in life. Putting out fires. He had worked himself up to assistant chief of the Algren volunteer fire department, and was hankering after the number one position. It was his dream. But he couldn’t be a volunteer — let alone fire chief — with the Algren fire department if he didn’t live within the town limits. It was a provincial policy having to do with something called response time. A team of firefighters couldn’t be waiting around for volunteers to commute from all over the place. They had to be in the town. Besides, thought Hosea, there were too many men living right in Algren and a couple of women, including Jeannie, Hosea’s next-door neighbour, wanting to be put on the roster. I like to help out where I can, she’d told Hosea. Occasionally, there’d be a major house fire — once there was a tragedy involving some drunken teenagers — but mostly it was putting out burning outhouses, overheated cars, kitchen fires, and stubble fires. That was Johnny Dranger’s specialty. He had it in for stubble burners. But, thought Hosea, the farmers around here don’t start burning their stubble until harvest time, and by then he could be back in. I’ll make it up to him, thought Hosea, I’ll crown him fire chief of Algren after July first, and he’ll be in charge just in time to get those darn stubble burners.
Hosea drove down First Street, turned onto Main Street, crossed over the tracks, and began driving down the service road that ran alongside the dike that surrounded Algren. The dike was supposed to protect Algren from the raging flood-waters of the Rat River. The Rat River, thought Hosea. My ancestors landed in Halifax, hopped on a train going west, then crept up the Rat River and settled in Algren, Manitoba. My mother’s dead, my father is the Prime Minister of the country, I think, and I am the mayor of Canada’s smallest town and the spurned lover of the bold and beautiful Lorna Garden.
Hosea peered around the countryside. Dirt everywhere and grey snow, dog shit, ugly cows, puffs of steam coming out of their snouts and their rear ends, the smell of wet hay, and the sky that brilliant blue, the colour of toilet bowl cleanser. Hosea heard a screech, a voice. “Hosea, stop, stop!” Mrs. Cherniski the café owner was running down her long driveway wearing what looked like Shaquille O’Neal’s basketball shoes and waving a rake around her head. “Get him, Hosea, get that motherfucking dog away from my Pat, goddamn it if he … that’s it, he’s mounting her, Hosea, get him, get him …”
Hosea scrambled out of his car and stood there for a minute, straightening his hat, trying to figure out what was going on. “Stop him, Hosea, for Christ’s sake!” Mrs. Cherniski had slowed down by now and had her hand on her chest. The last part of her command to Hosea seemed to be swallowed up by tears and rage. She threw her rake as far as she could, spluttering and moaning, “Stop him, oh God, please stop him,” and then crumpled into a heap on her driveway.
Hosea stood, frozen to the spot. Was she dead? A heart attack? For a split second he thought of his plan. Wouldn’t that be a stroke of luck, after all, if Mrs. Cherniski was dead? He glanced at the dogs and ran over to Mrs. Cherniski who, by this point, was sitting on the driveway cross-legged and catatonic, shaking her head and muttering, “Bill Quinn, his name is Bill Quinn.”
“What’s that, Mrs. Cherniski?” said Hosea. “Who’s Bill Quinn?”
“The dog,” said Mrs. Cherniski, “the dog screwing the living daylights outta my Pat right over there, that’s who Bill Quinn is. He may not be the original Bill Quinn, he may be Bill Quinn the Second or even the Third, but, mark my words, Hosea Funk, that dog’s got bad blood coursing through his veins. That dog’s the devil’s best friend, loyal to the end …” Mrs. Cherniski stared straight ahead and spoke in a monotone. “I should have known when I saw him hanging around my café, driving my customers away with his disgusting antics. I should have known he’d be after my Pat next.”
“How do you know his name?” asked Hosea.
“I know,” said Mrs. Cherniski. “I just know.”
“But,” said Hosea. “I don’t mean to upset you further, Mrs. Cherniski, but isn’t it sort of a natural thing for dogs to do, especially now that spring is here?” Hosea couldn’t help but steal another peek at the dogs. He turned back to look at Mrs. Cherniski but she was asleep or dead, not moving, anyway — laid out flat now on the wet driveway, basketball shoes pointing up to Polaris, up towards the brilliant blue sky.
Okay, what? thought Hosea. What do I do? “Mrs. Cherniski?” he said, without touching her. “Mrs. Cherniski?” Nothing. Not a peep. She can’t be dead, thought Hosea. Just because of … of Bill Quinn? Hosea got up and began to run. He ran up the driveway and across the yard and into Mrs. Cherniski’s house. The TV was on and the room smelled like vanilla. He found the phone in the hallway and called the hospital.
“Charlie Orson Memorial Hospital, how may I direct your call?”
“What?” said Hosea. Is this a joke? he thought.
“How may I help you? Hello? Hello?”
“It’s Hosea Funk.”
“Oh God, Hosea, not you again. Now what? Do you want to know what we’re serving for lunch? Or maybe—”
“No, no, Dr. Bon — sorry, François — it’s Mrs. Cherniski. You know, the woman who owns the Wagon Wheel.”
“Yes? What about her?”
“She’s lying in her driveway,” said Hosea. “I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. She just collapsed. There’s this dog and—”
“Wait. In her driveway?”
“Yes.”
“At her house or at the Wagon Wheel?”
“House.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there. Go back to her and loosen her clothing and see if you can get her to talk to you. You could try doing artificial respiration. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
Five minutes later Dr. François and Nurse Barnes and Lawrence Hamm, who happened to be the volunteer driver, had Mrs. Cherniski strapped to a gurney and ready to be loaded into the back of the ambulance. The doctor had found her pulse but it was weak and her breathing was irregular and shallow. Thankfully, Hosea had thrown his hat into his car before Lawrence Hamm had driven up. Surely he would have recognized his dead father’s hat and accused Hosea of stealing it right there on the spot. Hosea stood by the side of the road and waved as they drove back to town and then was happy that nobody had looked up at him to see him wave good-bye to an ambulance. “Yes,” whispered Hosea under his breath, and then, “no, no.”
What kind of a … Hosea thought. Well, say she died, say Mrs. Cherniski didn’t make it, at least she’d be rid of that Bill Quinn character. But then again, he didn’t want to wish death upon her, not really, that is. Maybe she won’t die but she’ll be incapable of looking after herself and she’ll have to move in with her daughter in the city. Even if just until July first. By then she’ll be fit as a fiddle and she’ll be able to come back to Algren and work in the café. Hosea looked over at the dogs. Pat was snapping at some flying thing and Bill Quinn was lying in a puddle, asleep. Bill Quinn, thought Hosea. In a strange and stupid way he admired Bill Quinn.