Bull Head (6 page)

“I thought you were upstairs.” He drops the spoon in the sink.

“You know I don't like it when you leave things in there.”

“Sorry.” He rinses the spoon and puts it in the dishwasher.

“Where the hell have you been?” She steps into the kitchen and rests against the counter, clenches her wine glass. Her brown eyes are narrow and steely; her dark hair wet, pulled back in a tight ponytail.

“I lost track of time.”

“Where were you?”

“Out with Ricky.”

“Where?”

“C'mon. It's Ricky. At the bar.”

“The titty bar?”

“We had a beer after work.”

“Jesus, I only ask one thing of you. One fucking thing.” She smacks the fridge door with her palm.

“I only had one beer.”

“I don't care if you had ten. You're so selfish, you know that?” Her voice wavers. “Do you have any idea how many of those women are abused, hooked on drugs? How can you sit there and watch them?” She wipes her eye with a knuckle.

“Sorry.” He steps toward her.

“You make me sick. Don't touch me.”

“It was just a beer. You know how Ricky gets.”

“No. How does he get?”

“Listen, it's been a long day. I left him behind and rushed home. Let me fix you a drink.” He uncorks another bottle of wine, fills her glass.

“You can be such an asshole.”

“I know. I know.” He massages her neck and shoulders.

“How's your eye?” She strokes the swollen skin below his eye with the pads of her fingers. Her touch feels strange, comforting.

“Makes me look like a bad-ass.”

“Things have been so crazy at work lately.”

“I know.”

“It looks a lot better.” She kisses his ear, whispers, “Does it hurt?”

“It's fine.”

“Forgive me?” Her voice vibrates low in his ear. She nibbles on his earlobe, tugs it.

He wants to believe that she's turned a corner and, once the pressure of her work subsides, she'll be more like the woman he married three years ago. He nods. “Sure.”

She pulls away and holds out her glass for him to refill, and when he does, she grabs a bowl from the cupboard and places it on the counter. “You better eat. Morning's coming fast.”

The next day at Canal Flats, after he makes the first of three long hauls and waits as the loader plucks trees from his trailer, Lonnie writes a letter. His pen scrawls over the sheet of paper, a desperate man's scratchings.

His last personal ad went unanswered, but Ricky encouraged him to write another, and although he hadn't seen the letter, Ricky teased that it had been too serious, filled with too much horseshit. “You gotta stand out, man. Like a black wolf or a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. A guy with a patch over his eye, something. Make women take notice of you.”

Now Lonnie tries to write something true about himself, something light.

Robust Romeo Seeks Shapely Juliet
:

I'm a 34-year-old, overweight underachiever on the verge of giving up on love. I have short black hair and dark brown eyes. I pray when I need help and I'm embarrassed to say that I own a Bible but proud to say I haven't read it because frankly, it bored me to death when I tried. Guess
I'm going to hell. I'm somewhat athletic, or at least was. Now I sit on my butt all day and super-size my meals. I use Dial soap and sleep with my feet outside of the covers.

I drink but don't smoke and I'm not very good at being around strangers. Most of the time I'm lonely and moody. Plus, I'm married. She once loved me but now loathes me. Despite my spare tire, trucker butt and secret love of donuts, I'm what you might call a good-looking homebody.

He re-reads the letter, folds and slips it into an envelope, addresses it to
The Free Press.
After the logs are unloaded, he drives to the general store in Canal Flats for a stamp, two cans of cola, a candy bar, and a large bag of potato chips. He slips the letter through the mailbox slot and begins the long drive to Top of the World, taps his fingers on the steering wheel, dips into the bag of chips between his legs.

Later in the week, after he drops off the last load of logs, Lonnie stops to check his post office box. He parks his rig behind Tamarack Mall, climbs down, and ambles past rusted low-ride sedans and shiny pickup trucks with dual rear tires.

He walks along the row of shops—Chatters Hair Salon, Sunshine Video, Saan. In Suds & Duds, he is startled to see the stripper standing in front of a washing machine with a young boy who holds a basket of laundry. She wears loose navy blue sweatpants short on the calf, tennis sneakers, an oversized sweatshirt. Her hair is tied up.

She helps the boy stuff some dark clothes into the washer,
dumps in a capful of liquid detergent, digs through her pockets for change. She's shorter than he remembered. Lonnie notices her anklet. When she glances toward the window, he freezes. They lock eyes for a moment before he turns away, scans the parking lot, kicks at the ground. He looks up again. She's immersed in a celebrity magazine. Her son slouches in a chair next to her with his arms crossed. Lonnie considers walking into the laundromat to pretend he's waiting for his laundry, buy a candy bar from the vending machine, casually strike up a conversation with her. But there's the grime on his jeans and hands, his suspenders, his sweat-stained ball cap. Instead he hurries into the card shop and checks his postal box. Empty. He leaves and stops in at the Overwaitea, buys two packages of steaks, a can of corn, four large potatoes, and a box of tampons for Dani, and rushes past the laundromat without lifting his head.

The lights are off when he arrives home. Next door, the Johnson boys hammer boards together in the shape of a small dog kennel; Johnson shouts at his wife inside the greenhouse.

Lonnie closes the door and sets the groceries down on the counter. “Dani?” He kicks off his boots and climbs the stairs. “Hello?” Sits on the edge of the bed, peels off his wool socks, unhooks his overalls, unbuttons his shirt.

He turns the shower on and steps into the tub, draws the curtain behind him. Runs a bar of soap under his armpits, over his drooping chest, jiggles the flesh beneath each breast, pins his shoulders back to stretch the skin. Dani's right. Man boobs. He tries to recapture the stripper writhing on the blanket in front of
him. Her legs spread open, her hairless skin, the way she touched herself, covered her crotch with the palm of her hand, her smile penetrating him. He tugs himself a few times but remains limp. Lonnie turns off the shower, towels himself and wipes the fog from the mirror. The bruise gives him a tough look, one he admires. “I'll kick your ass.” He pivots away, then toward the mirror. “I'm not kidding. I'll kick your ass.” He presses his finger-tips on the sore bone beneath his eye, slides his finger along the length of it so the pad of his finger touches the lower part of his eye. He sucks in his stomach, sticks out his chest, squints into the mirror, punches the air in front of him. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?” His stomach hangs over his groin like a shaggy meat skirt. Lonnie turns away from his reflection and exhales with resignation. The door opens downstairs. He dresses and hurries down to meet Dani.

“Hey. How was your day?” He leans toward her, but she turns away, slips out of her jacket, sets down her backpack.

“Messed up as usual.”

“Hungry? I'll get dinner started.”

She looks at him for a moment. Her face is ashen, whipped. “Jesus, is that all you think about? Food?”

“I just got home. These long hauls are killing me.” He takes the steaks out of the fridge, unwraps them, and seasons both sides with salt and pepper. Blood leaks around the edges.

“I suppose you stopped in to see Ricky?”

“I picked up the groceries, came straight home.”

“Like I believe you.” She looks in the cupboard. “Don't tell me you forgot to pick up wine? I spend the afternoon at the hospital with a woman who's got a couple of broken ribs, whose husband
still has the kids. This is so messed up.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Jesus. Get with the program.” Her fists hang clenched at her sides.

He reaches to hold them. “Come here.”

“What's wrong with you?” She yanks her hands away.

“I'll just be a minute.” He picks up the steaks and turns for the door.

“I'm pregnant.”

He stares at the blood seeping from the meat and sets down the plate. “What? How?”

“Wrong thing to say.”

“Sorry. I'm just a little surprised.”

“You don't sound happy.”

He knows this voice of hers too well, the defiance and disdain in it. He tries to remember the last time they slept together. A few months ago after one of their fights. She'd discovered the newspaper with his check marks beside bachelor suite rentals. She'd been deep into the wine and came into the guest room, slid in next to him naked except for a pair of cowboy boots. She pinched the folds on his stomach, slurred, “Let's start a family.” She got on her knees and faced the wall in the dark, her palms flat against it, and told him to ride her, cowboy. He pressed himself into her and began to stroke, the slap of his belly mocking him against her bottom. She twisted her head around and told him to give it to her harder. He closed his eyes, imagined she was the young woman he'd seen at the roadside 3 & 93 Dairy Bar, and ground into her, grabbed her boot heels, wheezed and gasped, lost in his own world, oblivious to her beneath him. Dani begged
him to slap her and pushed herself back against him so that they lost their rhythm. She leaned her face against the wall, reached behind, dug her hands into the flesh of his buttocks and pulled him into her again. But he couldn't finish. He remembered waiting for daylight to break into the room, listening to her finish herself off next to him.

“You going to say anything?”

He considers challenging her, testing her with questions to get at the truth, but it would only give her an opportunity to take out her frustrations on him. He can't afford another sleepless night in the spare room, his senses heightened and alert, listening for the sound of her moving around in the house.

“That's great news, baby. We have to celebrate.” He picks up the plate and heads outside, slaps the steaks onto the grill, and stabs them with a fork on both sides as bursts of flame flash around the raw meat. From the small deck in the backyard, he can make out Dani inside the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine, drinking it in several deep gulps before pouring herself another. Lonnie closes the lid, turns the gas on high, and waits for the meat to cook.

Lonnie and Ricky sit at the bar, the Six at Six show just ended. Ricky's favourite—six women on stage at the same time, stripping and fondling each other, their breasts like helium-puffed balloons brushing against one another's backs. Lonnie finds it overwhelming, a depressing blur of too many naked bodies. Ricky reads the letter aloud.

Dear Romeo
,

I'm a simple woman with simple tastes who's wasting her English degree at a feedlot. Average height, average weight, winning smile, fabulous legs. I'm a closet-geek but I hide this by making fun of people I don't know. I'm divorced but not a home-wrecker. I may or may not go gently into the good night. Short or long term, dating me will be a gamble. I'll leave my toothbrush on your sink after our second date. I'll be a bit of a gamble in the bedroom, too. I'm a little curious about bondage but we can never try it at my house because my ex-husband lives in the basement and will hear us. Oh yeah, I do a bit of stand-up comedy, so likely our relationship will end up in a joke. Still interested
?

“That's one crazy woman.” Ricky dumps the letter on the table, fixes his eyes on the empty stage.

Lonnie folds the letter and puts it in his pocket. The stripper talks to the DJ, hands him a cassette tape. She holds a glass of soda water, a red straw poking out. Lonnie is struck by how she has transformed herself from the woman at the laundromat. “She sounds honest. Upfront. No bullshit.”

“She sounds like a cow.”

Lonnie pulls the letter out of his pocket, re-reads it, searches for hidden meaning. He feels foolish for sharing the letter with Ricky, slips it back in his pocket. The stripper laughs with the DJ.

“I'm just messing with you.” Ricky puts his arm around Lonnie's shoulder and squeezes him close, smacks him on the back. “Seriously, she sounds like a live one. You might have lucked out.”

Lonnie studies Ricky's face for mockery.

“I'm not kidding.” Ricky nods toward the stage. “You should check her out. A guy like you needs a beer and a piece of tail to keep his sanity.”

The DJ cuts the canned music, taps his microphone. “Gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for, all the way from our own little valley down the road, you might call her your neighbour, if you're lucky, let's put your hands together and show some love for Ms Shelby Sweet.” Men whistle and clank their beer bottles against the tabletops. Lonnie turns. Shelby prances to “You Shook Me All Night Long.”