“When I see that school bus come down the road with my kids in it, all happy and innocent, I’m gonna cry,” said Gord. “I’m just gonna sit here and cry and my older boys are gonna despise me and the little ones will just be scared of me crying. And I don’t even know what happened. And even if I did, it’s too late. I waited too long and now I’m screwed.”
“Why don’t you call her at her sister’s?” said Hosea.
“Ah, so I guess Jeannie told you where she went, eh?” said Gord.
“Do you want me to call her?” said Hosea. He didn’t have a clue what he would say, but he’d call if Gord wanted him to. “Gord?” said Hosea. Gord put his hands over his face and shook his head.
“I can’t talk to her, Hosea,” he said through his tears. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve never known what to say to her, that’s been my problem. A long time ago, I figured it out that I didn’t ever know what to say to her to make her happy, so I just tried to do things to make her happy, and not worry about the talking, and then somewhere along the way even that stopped, the doing stuff, and then—” Gord cried. Hosea sat down beside Gord and put his arm around his shoulders. Finally Gord spoke again. “I just love her, I want her back. And the babies, too.” Hosea nodded and both men stared off at the long road and the empty sky above it. After a while Gord said, “Do you listen to Lightnin’ Hopkins ever?”
And Hosea said, “Country’s my thing, really.”
Gord nodded and then said, “You know what the names of my babies are?”
“What are they?” said Hosea, vaguely remembering.
Gord took a breath. “Indigo,” he said, “and Callemachus, and Finbar. He’s the one with a little lung problem, Finbar is. But the doctor said it would heal.” Gord looked at Hosea. “Do you like those names at all?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Hosea, “you know, I do. I really do. They’re names of, well, of distinction.”
Gord stared at the road. “The bus is comin’,” he said. “I can hear it.”
“I guess I’d better be going,” said Hosea.
“Yup,” said Gord, getting to his feet. “That’s an Impala?” he asked, pointing to Hosea’s car.
“That’s right,” said Hosea.
Gord nodded. “Nice lines,” he said. “Good mileage?”
“Pretty good,” said Hosea. “I don’t go very far.”
Gord opened his front door. “Well,” he said, “that bus is comin’.”
“Bye, Gord,” said Hosea. Gord nodded and walked into his house.
What the hell is this? thought Knute. She’d gone up to Hosea’s office to call Max and see how things were going and she saw a note addressed to her on Hosea’s desk.
Dear Knutie, here’s twenty dollars to buy yourself a regular pair of shorts and some nice sandals, for the festivities on the first. Hope you don’t mind.
Regards, Hosea Funk.
Nice sandals? She didn’t think so. She didn’t think Baert would care what she wore, that is if he even showed up. She flipped the note over and wrote Will Do, Cheers, K. and pocketed the twenty. She could wear some of Dory’s regular shorts on the Big Day and buy Summer Feelin’ some new ones. She called home but it was busy. She stared out the window for a while and watched three guys and two women renovating the old feed mill into a theatre. Hosea thought he’d get Jeannie or someone to organize a production of Arsenic and Old Lace or The Music Man and get it running over the summer. Right now the only thing that would make anybody think it was a theatre and not a feed mill was a huge sign that read Future Home of the Feed Mill Summer Theatre of Algren. Which reminded her, she was supposed to give the Welcome to Algren, Canada’s Smallest Town sign a fresh coat of red paint and mow the grass around it so it stood out properly. She decided to make a quick call to Marilyn first.
“How the hell are you?” asked Marilyn. “Are you in the city?”
“No, I’m at work, in Hosea’s office.”
“You’re working in the office now?”
“No, I’m calling from the office. I have to go and paint a sign.”
“The one in the ditch? The smallest town in the world?”
“In Canada. Yeah.”
Marilyn laughed and said, “Well, you still have the job, that’s a record, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think it is, actually.”
“How’s the domestic situation?” she asked.
“Weird. How’s yours?”
“Stupid.”
“I figured. So, hey, do you and Josh want to come out here for Canada Day? There’ll be a little midway and fireworks, Baert might even show up.”
“What? The Prime Minister? Really?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan. It was in the paper a while ago. He promised to visit Canada’s smallest town on the first. And we might be it. I have to wear nice sandals.”
Marilyn was laughing. “Herod’s idea?” she asked.
“Hosea’s. Yeah. I know, I know.”
“You know, I’d like to meet the Prime Minister, I’ve got a couple of questions for him. What’s he gonna do, operate the ferris wheel? He’s pretty ancient, isn’t he?”
“He’ll just walk around, I guess, and check things out, make a speech. You know, the usual.”
They talked for a while and Marilyn told Knute she’d try to make it out on the first, and then Knute had to go and paint the sign. On the way to the ditch she decided to stop in at home and see how things were going. Everything was quiet when she got there. She looked around thinking maybe Max and S.F. would jump out at any second and scare the shit out of her. She looked into Tom’s bedroom and he appeared to be fast asleep. Then she heard some murmuring coming from the basement and she snuck down the stairs as quietly as she could.
“Yeah,” she heard Max say. “I miss you, too. Yeah. Yeah. No, not really.”
He was on the phone. Who does he miss? she wondered. And then she knew. He missed a woman. Some woman she didn’t know. Some woman he had met in Europe or somewhere. She sat on the bottom stair looking at his bare back and listening to him talking to this woman. “No,” he said, “I’m not, either. Yeah, I still do. I love you, too. What? Yeah, sometimes. Summer Feelin’. I know. My old girlfriend. She has blond hair, yeah, she’s four. Five? No, she’s four.”
Yeah, she’s fucking four, Knute thought to herself. Get it straight, asshole.
“Yeah, I broke it,” Max said. “Oh, I fell. Nah.”
“Tell her how you fell!” Knute yelled and she ran for the phone and grabbed it from him and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. Max sat there with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds and then he started yelling.
“What the hell are you doing? Where’d you come from?” That sort of thing and Knute was yelling, “What the hell are you doing, you fucking asshole!” That sort of thing. That sort of very typical thing. She yanked the cord out of the wall and then threw the phone at Max, both of them screaming the whole time. He ducked and the phone knocked over a lamp and the bulb shattered all over the rug. “Where the hell is S.F.?” she yelled. By now she was sobbing and yelling, “I thought I could trust you!” And mixed in with “Where’s S.F.?” and “Who was that?” and “I can’t fucking believe it.” Then back to “I thought I could fucking trust you!” Over and over. Max was trying to get to her, to hold her and calm her down, but his cast hooked onto the phone cord and he fell into the broken light bulb, and he cut his back and started to bleed, and just lay there, saying, “Calm the fuck down, Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down, please. She’s playing in the back, she’s playing in the backyard with Madison. Shut the fuck up and let me talk to you.”