“So,” said Hosea, “where is she moving to?” A quick horrible thought came to him. Maybe she was moving into the next block, in with her sister who lived in Algren, in which case it would make no difference to the number of citizens, she’d still be in the same town.
“Winnipeg,” said Jeannie. “She’s moving into public housing in Winnipeg and she’s gonna go on welfare until she can get her act together. Right at the beginning she’ll be at her sister’s. They call it a trial separation, you know, they’re not getting a divorce or anything, but as far as I’m concerned, those trial separations never work, that’s it, it’s over, people don’t get back together again, they just call it a trial separation ’cause it’s not so, you know, conclusive, and, of course, for the sake of the kids, who probably don’t want their parents to split up and for her parents, who will probably be devastated, they’re so conventional, and Gord’s parents, who think the sun rises from his you-know-what and—”
“Do you know when they’re leaving?” Hosea asked Jeannie. “Yeah, sometime on the weekend. She’s fed up.” “Oh, you know what?” said Hosea. “I think I hear my phone ringing. I’d better go.” Hosea had heard all that he needed to hear. This was wonderful news. And on his birthday! Four people leaving, that would leave only one person too many for Canada’s smallest town. There was some hope, there was a chance Hosea’s dream might come true. He threw Leander’s hat down on the sofa and rushed to the phone to call Lorna.
“Do you know anything about the Algren cockroach?” Knute asked Tom. No answer. “Do you know anything about petunias?” No answer. “Do you know anything about polite conversation?”
“Plenty,” said Tom. “Too much.”
“Then tell me about the Algren cockroach,” said Knute. No answer. She sat down on the bed next to him. “Did you know that cockroaches are responsible for producing 85 percent of the world’s methane gas?”
“No,” said Tom, sadly, “I didn’t.”
“Well, it’s true, it’s their flatulence that does it. Have you ever delivered a two-headed calf?”
“No.”
“A two-headed horse?”
“No.”
“A two-headed anything?” No answer. She sat and stared at her hands. She yanked a few bits of material dangling from her cutoffs and rolled them into a ball and flicked it to the floor.
“Do you miss being a vet?” she asked.
“No,” he said. Silence for a while. S.F. was playing in her room and Knute could hear her softly singing. She looked at the sky through the window. It would be a very hot day. It was time to leave for work. She got up and Tom said, “I never loved being a vet.”
“No?” said Knute.
“I wanted to take care of people,” said Tom. “I would have liked to have become a doctor.”
“Really? Why didn’t you?”
Tom sighed and smiled at her. “I was afraid I’d make a mistake.” They heard S.F. running down the hall and yelling, “Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here!”
“Well,” said Knute, “S.F. needs a lot of attention and Max has a broken leg …”
Tom smiled. “Think that’ll keep him from running away again?” he asked.
Knute reached around to feel her cigarettes in her back pocket.
“Gotta go,” she said.
“Hey, Knutie,” said Tom, “how’s Hosea doing?”
“Fine, fine,” Knute said. “He’s kind of strange, he’s okay.”
Tom smiled. “Say hi to him, will you?”
Knute nodded. “You were afraid to make a mistake because … why?”
Tom sighed again.
“I know why,” said Knute. “Because you wouldn’t want to be responsible for screwing somebody’s life up, or for cutting it short. You wouldn’t want to kill anybody. Right?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “that’s part of it.”
“But then again, you might have saved somebody’s life. Or made it better.”
Tom was quiet.
“You know,” he said finally, “horses gather in clusters when they know it’s going to rain. Isn’t that smart? So if you want to know when it’s going to rain, go for a drive in the country and look at the horses. They always know.” He closed his eyes and smiled. Knute could hear Dory giving instructions to Max. “… and a chicken casserole in the freezer if you’re interested … and his tablets are on the kitchen table, S.F. likes to bring them to him in an egg cup …”
“Tablets?” said Max.
“Pills,” said S.F. “Tablets are pills.”
“Okay,” said Max, “fine. Do you know how many he gets and how many times, all that?”
“She knows,” said Dory. “If he doesn’t wake up or respond when she goes in, she just leaves them on the bedside table. He takes them eventually. Or so we think, anyway … is that a skirt you’re wearing?”
Knute looked at Tom. Did he listen to their conversations all day? Did he care? His eyes were closed and his feet stuck out from beneath his blanket. They were big, strong-looking feet with blue veins all over them and they looked ridiculous poking out from under the soft, yellow cover.
“Yeah, it’s a skirt,” Knute heard Max say. “I’m not going to cut my jeans to get them over this stupid cast, and I refuse, on principle, to wear sweat pants or baggy shorts, so for now I’m wearing dresses. They’re cooler.” Knute heard Dory and S.F. begin to laugh and she left Tom to join them. Sure enough, Max had a skirt on and a wide leather belt. The skirt was a green suede mini with pockets that had outer stitching on them. He had one big black boot on, with a hockey sock, a baseball cap on backwards that said And? on the front of it, and no shirt. She noticed a few scratches on his shoulder that she had probably given him. His cast was covered with S.F.’s drawings of hearts and flowers and crooked houses with smoke coming out of their chimneys. She had painted the toenails poking out of the cast a light pink. “It’s one of my mom’s,” he explained to us. “It was too big, of course, so I just cinched it here with this tool belt, like this, and … what do you think?” S.F. nodded her head and said, “It’s cute,” and Dory said, “Nice legs.”
thirteen
Richard? thought Hosea. No. Tobias? No, no. Magnolia? Scarlet? Or just Jane? Emmylou? No, he couldn’t. How about Lorna? She’d hate it. Not another Lorna Garden, she’d groan. Euphemia? Hmmmmm … too bad Summer Feelin’s taken, he thought, and smiled. He was on his way to Gord and Veronica Epp’s place. On the way he’d survey his town and note the progress Knute was making with the flowers, the painters were making with the water tower, and the renovation people with the old feed mill.
It was a beautiful hot mid-June day and Hosea was wearing shorts for the first time that year. He also had on a tomato-red T-shirt with white letters spelling Canada, a woven belt he’d bought at a Native American craft shop in Denver when he’d been trying to impress Lorna at the auctioneers’ convention, white tube socks, and his L.A. Gear runners. And, of course, his hat, Leander’s hat, which was the same shade of beige as his shorts. He looked down at himself, for a second, while driving, and thought he might look like Indiana Jones’s dad. Oh well, he didn’t care. Things were good, only one person too many in his town, a woman who loved him, an almost guaranteed visit from the man who must be his father, a bun in the oven — sorry, he thought, a baby on the way — and, to top it off, he’d lost six and a half pounds.
He drove down First Street and turned left onto Main, towards the feed mill. On the sunny side of the street he saw Knute, who had been taking care of the flowers, suddenly drench herself with the water in her watering can, and the doctor standing beside her wearing cycling shorts and a tight T-shirt and laughing. Hosea smiled. Nothing wrong with that, he thought. He watched as Knute shook her head and sprayed water all over the doctor.