Canada (16 page)

After a while I went to my room and lay on my bed. Berner came in and closed the door and announced that, in her view, our parents were crazy. She said that after our mother had finished talking on the telephone she’d come out to the kitchen, and she—Berner—had gone and looked in their room as if she could detect who our mother had been talking to. Our mother’s suitcase was lying open on her twin bed, articles of her clothes already in it. She went out and asked why the suitcase was there, and our mother said we’d soon be taking a trip. She didn’t say to where. Berner asked if our father would be going, and our mother had said he certainly could if he wanted to, but probably he wouldn’t. Berner said this conversation made her feel sick to her stomach and want to throw up—though she didn’t—and after a while it made her want to run away from home and right then get married to Rudy Patterson. I thought I wasn’t going to be invited to go with them on that trip.

At four o’clock our mother went in their bedroom to take a nap. When her door was shut, my father came to my room and looked in, then went to Berner’s door. He wondered if we’d like to take a drive over to the fairgrounds, since he’d read admission was half-price the last afternoon and at night there’d be fireworks. He said there wasn’t any reason not to stick our noses in. He smiled in a way I thought of as mischievous and gave the impression he was putting one over on our mother.

I, of course, did want to go very much. There were important, complicated things to be learned. Experts would be demonstrating in a glass-sided hive where the queen bee lived and how to deal with smoke pots so you didn’t get stung to death—which my father had said and worried me.

Berner said she wasn’t interested. Lying on her bed, she said people in school said only smelly Indians went the last day because they were broke and always drunk. She’d seen enough Indians after the carfuls that had come past our house all week while the two of them couldn’t be bothered to stay around.

Our father had put on his polished cowboy boots and a pair of pressed jeans he wore to the land-sales office—though he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair the way he usually did. He was smiling, but he looked strange again, as if his facial features weren’t fixed on their bones right. Standing in Berner’s doorway he told her he regretted the Indians coming by, but they were pacified now. Once his uncle Cleo had invited him to drive with him down to Birmingham. But he’d had a little girlfriend named Patsy at the time. He told Uncle Cleo he couldn’t go because he had a chance to see Patsy. Then the next month Uncle Cleo got killed at a train crossing where the gate didn’t work, and he never saw Uncle Cleo again and always regretted not going with him.

“I don’t see that was your fault,” Berner said from her bed, where she was filing her fingernails. “Maybe Uncle Cleo should’ve been more careful.” She enjoyed bickering with him and feeling superior.

“No doubt about it,” our father said. “I just thought I could go to Birmingham with Uncle Cleo any ole time. And it turned out I couldn’t.”

Berner said something I couldn’t hear because of the fan. I thought she said, “So are you going to get killed if I don’t go?”

“I hope not,” my father said. “I truly hope that doesn’t happen.” Berner had a mouth—I already said that. My father’s word for her was that she had “hauteur.”

“That’s blackmail,” she said. “I don’t want to be blackmailed.”

“Maybe I’m not saying it right,” our father said.

Then Berner said something else I didn’t make out. But I knew she’d relented by the complaining tone in her voice. I heard the floorboards squeeze in her room. She couldn’t resist him when he focused in on her. Only our mother could. We loved both of them, for what it mattered. This shouldn’t get lost in the telling. We always loved them.

Chapter 23

W
E DROVE UP THIRD STREET, ALONG THE RIVER
, past where Berner and I’d walked and fed the ducks. The sky had come unsettled again and windy, moving smells around. Flat, purple-bottomed clouds slid up out of the south. Whitecaps danced on the river surface and gulls soared in the damp breeze. There’d be a thunderstorm. It had been trying to all day. Fall was starting—our mother had been right.

I was thinking, in the back seat, not about the bee demonstration, but about the tent where the State Police exhibited their weapons for citizens’ inspection. Some chess club members had speculated about the bazooka and the box of hand grenades and the Thompson submachine gun that would be on display there. There’d been conjecture about what uses the police would ever put these weapons to. The thinking revolved around Indians, who were considered a criminal element, and Communists, who plotted against America. I’d looked a third time in my father’s sock drawer to find out if his pistol was there. It wasn’t. I fantasized he’d shot someone (possibly the man Mouse) and disposed of the gun by throwing it in the river.

Berner sat in front and acted sullen about coming with us—which I didn’t appreciate. There was traffic near the fairgrounds entrance. Twice our father looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Okay, who’s that following so close behind us, Dell?” This was a game. I’d look through the rear window, but there wouldn’t be anything. This time, however, I noticed the same black car twice. As we drove along outside the whitewashed fairgrounds fence, I saw the tops of the rides inside—the Ferris wheel, the Zephyr (which had been described to me at school), the curved top of the roller coaster with a train of cars snaking over and shooting down, with people waving and shouting. Music and crowd noise and loudspeaker voices were jumbled in the windy air the way I’d heard them at home—including women’s voices reading out bingo numbers. The wind carried the aroma of sawdust and manure and something sweeter. It excited me to want to hurry inside before the gate shut. My jaw ached from clenching it, and my toes were tingling. Traffic, though, was clogged up by old beaters and rez jalopies full of kids and by people who were clearly Indians, walking single file along the roadside toward the pedestrian entrance.

It was just at that instant—when we were next in line to turn into the big entrance gate—that I found the packet of money. In nervousness, I’d pushed my hand into the crease between the back seat cushions and into the cool space below the seat, and my left hand made contact with something I pulled out at once. It was a packet of U.S. bills bound in a white paper sleeve, on which was stamped the words
AGRICULTURAL NATIONAL BANK, CREEKMORE, NORTH DAKOTA
. I was astounded. I said “Oh,” loud enough to make my father instantly look at me in the driver’s mirror. I stared right into his eyes, which were holding me prisoner. “What’d you see?” he said. “Did you see something behind us?” His mouth was moving below his eyes, but his voice was separate. I thought he might turn around and look at me—which Berner did. She looked straight at the packet of money, then immediately faced forward. “Did you see the goddamn cops?” my father said.

“No,” I said.

People were honking behind us. We’d come to a complete stop when we were supposed to be turning left into the fairgrounds. Inside the gate, cars were parking on the grass, beyond which were the rides and the midway. A deputy was signaling us to go forward. Other cars were driving out and there was another deputy waving them on. It was a confusion.

“What the hell is it, then?” My father was irritated, glaring into the rearview, and not moving ahead.

“A bee,” I said. “A bee stung me.” It was all I could think of to say. I stuffed the bills down the front of my jeans. Berner turned around halfway and sneered at me, as if I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. My heart began pounding. I don’t know why I didn’t say
I found a lot of money. What’s it doing in here?
Instead, I acted as if
I’d
stolen the money, or someone had, and I shouldn’t get caught with it, but that it would go away if it was out of sight.

“Goddamn cops,” our father said. “Spoil everything.” He glared again into the mirror, at whoever was behind us. And instead of turning in front of the deputy and driving us into the fairgrounds, he mashed the accelerator and we spurted on down Third without turning. I didn’t know why he was worried about the police.

“Where’re we going?” I said, the white fence hurrying past.

“We’ll go next year,” my father said. “It’s too crowded in there. They’re letting every squaw in. And it’s about to rain.”

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“I thought you liked Indians,” Berner said in her haughty voice.

“I do,” our father said. “Just not today.”

“If not today, when, then?” She said this only to taunt him.

“When I’m good and ready,” he said. And that was the end of the fair.

Chapter 24

W
E DROVE DOWN TO SMELTER AVENUE AND
Black Eagle. My father’s eyes were fastened to the rearview as if he’d seen something he needed to get away from, which I guessed was the reason we weren’t going to the fair. He pushed his fingers up through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck above his shirt collar. He looked at me because I was boring a hole in him with being angry. We were driving toward the smelter stack and the refinery, which kept its lights on day and night and had gas outlets spewing yellow flames. It stank when you got close to it. Rudy had said his father smelled like the refinery all the time, which was one reason his mother had moved to San Francisco.

“Does this mean we’re not going?” Berner said.

“Most of the rides were already shut down,” our father answered.

“No, they were not,” Berner said. “I could see in. You were driving. Or trying to.”

“I didn’t care about the rides,” I said. Hot refinery fumes filled the inside of the car.

“P-U-stink,” Berner said, and rolled up her window as we went past the maze of pipes and giant valves and bulk tanks, and men in silver hard hats moving around on catwalks and metal scaffolds, and the long flame from the vent pipes licking the gusty air. The refinery stood between Smelter Avenue and the river. We were headed for the Fifteenth Street Bridge, which would take us back across into Great Falls.

“I wanted to see the bee exhibit,” I said hopelessly and felt heartsick. It was one more thing I wouldn’t get to learn.

“Bees are smarter than we are,” Berner announced. The found money was bulging, lopsided in my pants front. Berner looked around at me again and smirked. She always pretended to know things I didn’t and belittle me.

“Bees are like the people out here in Montana, if you ask me,” our father said, angling to turn onto the bridge. “They’re all one way. Worker bees. Spiritless. A bunch of hobnobby Swedes and Norskies and Germans who managed not to get bombed to smithereens. They’re all tight like Jews. I’ve sold cars to ’em.” He sometimes said he’d bombed the Japs so Jews could run pawn shops. I was tempted to tell him that the organism of the hive was not the individual bee, and humans could learn a big lesson from them. But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself when I had the money in my pants.

“Where’re we going,” Berner said.

Our father was checking behind us in the mirror. “We’ll go out to the base. Watch the jets take off.” We’d done this every place we ever lived. He thought it was recreational. His eyes found me to see how I would take this in instead of going to the fair, which was now a bust. His eyebrows flickered, as if this was a joke Berner wasn’t included in. I didn’t smile back.

“Mother’s got her bag half packed up,” Berner said. “Where’s she going?”

We were out onto the old WPA bridge. Our father sniffed, pinched his nostrils, then sniffed again. His eyes flickered toward the mirror, not at me. “I’m just married to your mother, okay? I can’t read her every thought or know every single detail about her. She loves you very much. Just like I do.” He was agitated. He added, “I’ve got some bothers of my own right now that would occupy a wild beast’s attention. I don’t get everything perfect every time, I realize.”

“Where’d you go when you left?” Berner looked straight at him, her freckled face pale, as if she was getting carsick. Our father looked in the rearview yet again. I looked to see what was behind us. A black Ford was there with two men in the front seat wearing suits. They were talking to each other. One was laughing. I couldn’t remember if it was the car I’d seen at the fairgrounds, but I believed it was.

“Your mother might have to take you kids on a trip,” he said. “Don’t let it worry you.”

“Did you hear what I said to you?” Berner said.

“Yes, I did.” Our father clicked on his turn blinker as we were about to depart the bridge and intended to go east toward the base. But he suddenly speeded up, drove straight off the bridge, went another block, and turned right on Seventh toward downtown, and onto a pretty shaded street of white frame houses—nicer than ours—with more substantial elms and oaks and better-tended lawns and a redbrick school. I didn’t know who lived here. Possibly the chess club boys whose fathers were lawyers. I’d never been in this part of town, though Great Falls wasn’t very big. It was a town, not a city.

I looked behind us. The black Ford had turned and was still there, the two men still talking. We weren’t going to the base to watch jets either.

“What’d you do with your pistol?” I said.

My father’s eyes shot up at me, then back at the Ford. “What do you know about that?”

“I looked in your drawer.”

He sighed in a frustrated way. “You oughtn’t do that. That’s my private affairs.” He wasn’t angry. He never got angry with us. We hadn’t done anything anyway.

“Why is it private? What
makes
it private?” Berner said.

“Do you children know what making sense means?” His eyes kept running up to the rearview. We’d come all the way down Seventh to the river again. Whitecaps were still lathering the water’s wide surface. Across the river was the fair, the tops of the Zephyr and the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster visible under the skating clouds. Nothing had been taken down. We could’ve been there.