The Prime Minister had promised to visit Canada’s smallest town on July first, and Algren, the letter had noted, was one of the preliminary qualifiers in the contest. Everybody in Algren knew it had been short-listed, why wouldn’t it be? After all, check out the sign on the edge of town. Even the Winnipeg daily paper had mentioned, in one line, on a back page, that Algren had been picked as a nominee for the Prime Minister’s visit. But the people in Algren went about their business with very little thought of July first, other than looking forward to the holiday from work, and the rides and the fireworks. If Algren had the smallest population at the time of the count, great. If not, who really cared? After all, they thought, the Prime Minister had made promises before. Of course, they knew Hosea Funk was extremely proud of Algren’s smallest-town status, he was proud of everything about Algren. Good for him, they thought, usually with a smile or a raised eyebrow. Might as well be. But nobody in Algren knew what Hosea knew, or what he thought he knew, or just how determined he was to be the winner.
Hosea wanted to relax, to savour the early morning calm, to stretch out in bed, enjoy his nakedness, and happily welcome the new day. A small part of him wished his mornings resembled those in the orange juice commercials where healthy clean families bustle around making lunches and checking busy schedules, kissing and hugging and wishing each other well. But he was alone. And he hated orange juice. It stung his throat.
So Hosea lay quietly in his huge bed. For the last year or so he had been working on his panic attacks. Mornings were the worst time for them. And for heart attacks. His buddy Tom had had his in the morning just about an hour after waking up. Hosea suspected, however, that his determination to stay calm was a bit like overeating to stay thin and so he tried not to think about it too much. Instead he tried to relax his entire body starting from his toes and working his way to the top of his head. The alarm on his clock radio came on, as usual, ten minutes after he woke. It was set to a country station, and Emmylou Harris was wailing away, Heaven only knows just why lovin’ you would make me cry, and Hosea thought, Ah Emmylou Harris, a voice as pure as the driven snow, a real class act, all that hair and those cowboy boots with the hand-painted roses …
Hosea lay naked in his bed and whispered Emmylou, Emmylou a few times and closed his eyes and mumbled along with her, Heaven only ever sees why love’s made a fool of me, I guess that’s how it’s meant to be … He thought of Lorna and the last time they’d made love and then tallied up the days, and the weeks. Almost two months.
He tried to leap out of bed, just as his own personal joke, but ended up getting tangled in the sheet, knocking the radio off the bedside table, and yanking the cord out of the outlet, so that Emmylou Harris was cut off and fifty-two-year-old Hosea Funk, mayor of Algren, was left alone again and aching.
But not for long because by now the sun was up and he had work to do. Fifteen minutes on his exercise bike, a piece of whole wheat toast with honey, black coffee, half a grapefruit, a freshly ironed shirt, and a shave, and Hosea was out the door of his modest bungalow and driving down First Street in his Chevy Impala, humming the Emmylou tune on his way to the Charlie Orson Memorial Hospital.
The town of Algren had four long streets running north-south, one of them being Main Street, and ten short avenues running perpendicular to the streets. It was possible to walk anywhere in town in less than fifteen minutes, but Hosea almost always drove.
Driving down First Street towards Hospital Avenue, Hosea continued to think about Lorna. She had been his girlfriend for about three and a half years. About the same length of time it had been since Euphemia Funk had died. They had met at an auctioneers’ convention in Denver. Auctioneering had been another thing Hosea was involved in, following Euphemia’s death, but had since abandoned. For a guy who had trouble finding the right words to say hello, auctioneering wasn’t the best hobby. Lorna had been wearing a name tag that had said, “Hi, my name’s …” then nothing — she hadn’t filled it in and Hosea was smitten by her for this reason. He looked at everybody else’s properly filled-out name tags and thought how ridiculous they all were. And his, too, Hosea Funk, how absurd. Who was this mysterious Mona Lisa with the blank name tag, anyway?
Throughout the convention, Hosea stumbled about hoping to catch a glimpse of her, tugging fiendishly at his shirts and not giving a hoot about cattle calls or estate auctioneering protocol. He had been forty-nine at the time, but he felt like a sixteen-year-old-kid, creating impossible scenarios in his mind whereby he could prove himself worthy of this mysterious woman with the blank name tag.
On the plane home from the convention he had all but given up, when, to his amazement, he saw her stroll down the aisle towards him. She had stuck out her perfect hand and introduced herself. Lorna Garden. It turned out she lived in Winnipeg, was divorced with no children, worked as a medical secretary, and dabbled in auctioneering. The name-tag thing had been an oversight on her part. But Hosea was in love and Lorna thought he wasn’t too bad and the rest is history.
“And my relationship with her may be history, too,” thought Hosea, “if I don’t get my act together.”
Hosea couldn’t make up his mind, it seemed. Did he want her to move out to Algren and live with him or not? He knew Lorna wanted to, but now, with Hosea’s hemming and hawing, Lorna was starting to play it cool. “Whatever,” she’d said the last time they’d talked about it. Hosea hated that word. Whatever. All through his childhood on the Funk farm and then in town living with his mother he had heard it being used, oh, almost daily. Whatever, Euphemia would say if Hosea asked if he could have ten cents. Whatever, she’d say if he told her the U.S. had invaded Korea.
It wasn’t a question of damaging his public reputation, having Lorna live with him. The townspeople of Algren would have been happy for Hosea to have a woman living with him. And it wasn’t a question of room or money. Hosea had enough of both. And it certainly wasn’t a question of wavering commitment. He loved Lorna with all his heart. It was just … well, would she have been one person too many for Algren? For Algren’s status as Canada’s smallest town.
And soon Lorna might just give up on him, thought Hosea as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. But what could he do?
Hosea focused on the task at hand. He had a question to ask Veronica Epp — just one and he’d leave her alone. Veronica Epp was expecting her fifth child. This fact alone irked Hosea. But now there was some talk around town that she was expecting twins. If she had two babies instead of one, which he had figured on, Hosea would have to do some fancy footwork.
“Good morning, Jean Bonsoir,” said Hosea, with one slight tug at his front, to the hospital’s only doctor, an import from Quebec. His name was Jean François, but Hosea like to think his alternative pronunciation was funny and helped to break the ice.
“Hosea,” the doctor returned with a nod. He was counting the days until he could leave Algren for Montreal, where he could do something other than minor surgery and routine obstetrics and where people would pronounce his name correctly. It still peeved him to think of Hosea Funk calling his girlfriend, Genvieve, who remained in Montreal, Jenny Quelque Chose.
“Uh, listen, Doctor, I need to talk to Mrs. Epp for a minute, tops. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Fair enough?”
Jean François had understood the Mrs. Epp part and shrugged Hosea down the hall. “Room four, Hosea, but be quick because she needs to rest.”
“Will do,” said Hosea, already moving towards Veronica’s room.
He had begun to walk into her room as if he was entering his own kitchen but stopped abruptly. Veronica Epp was lying with her back towards him and, unfortunately for Hosea, her blue hospital gown had come untied, exposing her buttocks and lower back. Before turning away, Hosea thought to himself how a woman could look, well, like normal, from the back, even while she was ballooning out in the front, and he wondered if he himself looked thinner from behind. It was something to consider. But now, he grabbed at his shirt and took three steps backwards, returning to the hallway and standing on the other side of the doorway.