Come Back (2 page)

Her hand accepted his mug. He groped in his jean pocket for the plastic card and a quarter, her face poised perfectly above her spring-green shirt and bare arms.

“A bit more. Need a hit.”

Becca glanced up, and smiled. Always working, always silently lovely; an unwavering memory delight.

“On the house,” she said. “Snow celebration.”

“Hey, that’s a good one.”

“Only today, tomorrow it’s all gone.”

Hal laughed. “Just wait three days, there’s still May,” he said.

He seated himself with his warm mug. His everlasting northern streaky-white world beyond sheltering glass, today a wall of sloshing sidewalks and streets overlaid with the faint mirror of Double Cup space around him, silver mug and pale hand. He could see himself, dimly, a small, dark mound contemplating itself. The diaphanous window wall—so close if he leaned forward he would touch it—the shadows on the glass reflected him floor to ceiling, a mere spot on a faintly nurtured rubbing of the perfect coffee-shop gravestone—no—lifestone, so still, still but alive. Yes yes he was fine, just fine. Still alive ages after a Canadian bush boyhood and, miracle beyond miracle, an education none of his brothers or sisters could dream of and beautiful Yo and their three children—two … three—stop stupid, stop it. He was okay, his mind quick, sharp; he could concentrate on reading the endless passing bodies on the sidewalk empty and safe as a lifetime pushed behind him, more and more ignorable, forgotten—three boys walked right across the window wall, slouching past in furious talk, their jean pockets sagged barely above the backs of their knees—a lifetime may it please God forgiven.

And on Whyte Avenue light snow whirled in the wind following cars, was crunched into freezing slush by unknowable people and vehicles going and going, gone and sometimes coming back, thirty or forty thousand machines
crossing this intersection—was that what they said?—and perhaps more humans every day and night in all directions, the traffic of street and sidewalk an instinctive, polite, thoughtless Canadian order.

A city bus sighed right across the window. Empty.

This unending scarf woven of movement, every van and pickup and bike and car and crew-cab and hatchback and wheelchair delivery truck different, every single human body moving, and unique, every day. And whenever he came every day it was here, human and different and empty and warm, he need do nothing but sit snug and look. Empty. Comforted because he needed none.

Orange. A brilliant orange jacket above blue jeans walked out of the right edge of the glass wall. Long strides passing left fast, thick downfill sewn in squares of taut seams, standing orange collar zipped up high over lower nose and ear, exposed forehead curved to a widow’s peak of light-brown hair fluffed back with snow—ends curled! A moustache hidden by the collar?

Hal stared in stunned amazement: the tall, slender man with his half-hidden face gliding so fast across the mirrored glass to the trampled street corner and wheeling south into the crosswalk squished wet by cars, the long strides, the shift of shoulders inside the tight orange … there was … he was seeing, something, was it possible, a label, “The Down People of Canada/Michael S. Freed”—the tiny black label on the orange lining he had once found himself forced to remember beyond knowing, remember and remember until steadily, deliberately, he thought he had buried it forever into nothing—“6820 Size M Down 100%”—he saw
that label he knew to be sewn inside that seamed orange jacket, that drift of light-brown hair curled at its edges above the crossing crowd—that high hairline of head turn! There would be a moustache—Hal exploded in a scream:

“Gabe!”

He leaped to his feet, rammed himself through the door and past the square pillar and across the slipping sidewalk, hit a waiting man’s shoulder for balance and he stayed upright and was into Whyte Avenue, he was charging through sloppy slush right into the first wave of coming cars accelerating west at him across the intersection on their green light, he dodged into spaces between flashing, honking trunks and hoods though he was looking beyond them, beyond, he was waving his arms and screaming above the traffic,

“Gabe! Gabriel!”

as he floundered and fought the sliding street and the next wave of westbound cars reached him as he gained the third lane, their brakes squished as horns squalled but he was already across to the centre boulevard,

“Gabe!”

and a crash burst behind him, barely behind, and a hard-green pickup shuddered to a stop in front of him, horn blaring, as his shoulder—he just twisted to the side—slammed against the driver door—

“You stupid shit!” the driver shrieked out of her opening window.

“My son!” Hal yelled in her face and hurled himself around the front of the truck, hammered the hood with his right hand for balance as he leaped into the next
lanes—at that instant the coming car was still two lengths away—and he was across on the south sidewalk even as he heard more brakes and horns squeal behind him, something else crush! and more plastic and glass break even louder but he was on the old Royal Bank sidewalk and running south as fast as his straining body could propel him through the splotching snow while just barely keeping balance—startled people at the bus stop jerked out of his path—he was already gasping, his legs so massively heavy he was leaning forward more and more as his head yearned for speed, he was squinting to see and his exhausted old body betrayed him, slammed him crooked against a wall at the corner of the alley opening onto 104th Street and he knew like a kick in his shuddering gut that—where was he running? He was gasping in sudden whiteness. The Orange Downfill could have gone in any direction, down either street or avenue, even east or west down these alleys, past—where was he running?

The raven scrabbled up there, disappeared west.

He stumbled west down the potholed alley, sliding and flapping his arms but somehow not falling, not even to his knees while staring into every crevice of building on both sides, around battered power poles. Why would a tall man in an orange jacket turn into this miserable back lane? No one was anywhere—a small woman in an apron stood beside a dumpster, her hand pulling a cigarette from her face—he could say nothing, not even gesture. His fingers and ears and arms and face were on fire with cold, his stomach heaving from that burst of running and screaming; he was barely in motion now and his right leg cramped,
he found himself doubled over at the corner of a building. He could clutch, hold onto the wall and hide behind another dumpster and abruptly he heaved, convulsed into vomiting. He had not run in years, coffee and cereal and orange juice and sliced strawberries and more coffee like a smashed hose against the dumpster,
uggch
, get rid of it, he didn’t need it, turn away quick, he was limping in the parking lane along the length of the TIBC bank. Spit and swallow and spit, spit out the taste, flex the useless right leg. He grabbed a handful of snow and swiped it over his face and the ice stunned him, get away. No parked bank cars, get away, he stumped north along the wall, balancing better now and he was at Whyte again still swallowing bile, fainter now, on the south side in the middle of the block rubbing at his wet face with his wet freezing hand, which way dearest God and loving Father lead me, O

the psalm soaked forever in his choir memory sang through him like radiance.

How could it be Gabriel? Gone a quarter of a century.

There were police flashers now at Whyte Avenue and 104th Street … and he sweating cold in shirtsleeves, his parka and beaver cap on that chair. His coffee mug.

A siren wailed long and low and longer to his left: out of the slanting snow a massive Fire Rescue truck lumbered past, lights aflame like a blazing bush.

Gabriel … my son my son, did I see my …

And an ambulance.

He realized he was tipped sideways, clutching the granite corner of his bank … credit card, chequing account, semi-annual RRIF … he groped along the front into the inset door, the shelter of the ATM vestibule. The yellow-vested guard stood beyond the inner door smiling as always, but suddenly his mouth fell open, staring. Hal turned to the farthest bank machine, forcing his frozen fingers to dig out his wallet. Why was he here? He would never find an orange downfill by glaring at his bank card, shoving it in the slot. The surveillance cameras were certainly reading him in shirt and snow so he deliberately coded in 6-1-8-5 and waited, counting in his mind by hundreds slowly, slowly, and then swiftly jabbed himself out again. He yanked the card free and wheeled, pushed through the door without glancing at the guard who would certainly remember him, he was always there smiling like any terminally retired idiot, out into colder snow.

Traffic lanes, the median trees on Whyte. Before him nothing moved. He had managed to empty six lanes on one of the busiest streets in Edmonton. As fast as he could he jay-walked across, shuddering, his arms were freezing and his wet feet staggering so badly his right leg hooked and very nearly sprawled him onto the median but he caught himself upright against a lean tree, panting, the Christmas lights wound there all year and then he was over, could tilt into the corner of Ten Thousand Villages where he volunteered one afternoon a week, thank God yesterday, could rest with only his stomach heaving empty down to the bile. His aching leg. Through the window the mahogany
Ganesha offered him incomprehensible wisdom—but he desperately needed—get away from here. If Yvonne looked out from behind the counter … step out, walk as calmly as any ridiculous old bare-headed-in-the-snow pedestrian past shops and the trackless alley—no one had walked there as far as he could see—back to the coffee shop at the corner of 104th. A cluster of people, silent, hunched profiles shifting, glinting faintly in patrol car and high Fire Rescue and ambulance colours. The inset door handle seemed frozen steel to his bare hands but he jerked it open without losing skin. Becca straightened up from the shaky coffee table. She was holding his silver mug.

To pick up his parka he had to steady a numb hand on her arm. She flinched, but turned into him. Her perfect arm, strong, so warm, to hold a body warm, a living body.

She said into his ear, “What about that?” and gestured outside.

“No! No … I don’t want to be … no …”

“Okay.” She was so calm; she had served him coffee for centuries. “I don’t remember you here today.”

“No,” he said as softly, knowing what she meant, “No, don’t—”

She took his hand and nudged it with her cheek. The shop was empty but for eternal Ben bent into his computer screen as if no whirling lights existed, his virtual genealogies never-unending in time and space. For an instant Becca’s cheek brushed Hal again.

“You sometimes come in for coffee, sure, but no one will say,” she said. “Nothing.”

She was holding the other sleeve of his parka for him. He said, “They’ll check your surveillance.”

“They can’t if we don’t let them. It’s our camera.”

“Say nothing, okay, if you can, but if your boss—if something really bad …” he glanced towards the intersection. The lights swirling, the jacket backs of people. “Don’t perjure yourself about me, please.”

She touched his hand as he lifted his beaver cap, even as she turned away and gave him his mug, going. How could a teenage girl on minimum-wage boredom contain such gentilesse? God, you are good. He stuffed the cup in his parka pocket and walked out, shoved at the corner post to wheel himself north away from the crowd and the intersection heap of several crumpled—he wouldn’t look. The ambulance whooped once, yowled, then roared away in the direction of the University Hospital. But he was past the women’s boutique, the bar, across 83rd no matter what the light and lanes of idling cars, he forced himself to tramp on, his right side an agony at each step, good. And the funeral home squatting there—HOME—a grotesque word to nail on a dreadful necessity; the parking lot with its perfect hearse always waiting, waiting … never again, they would have to carry him in.

The world was covered white. Muttering with motionless cars and no snow falling.

Past the funeral building the air sifted gentle, almost warm against his face, snipping at spring suddenly. The tall stained glass of Blessed Redeemer Church where Owl stowed his stuff behind the lilac bush when it flowered in May against the brick wall and where he sometimes slept.
Home, he would get there, yes only one more intersection to get across, then railroad tracks, the alley, the giant boulevard ash trees flaring over his snow-lined apple tree trimmed no taller than he could reach and ready to bloom whiter than snow Lord wash me and I shall be, here, home.

He lay on his back on the kitchen floor. Breathing. He had managed to claw off his boots at the back door and toss aside his beaver cap and zip open his parka but that was it. The kitchen linoleum softened by the down parka. Blond cupboards all around over him, fridge starting with its tiny quiver. The house held him as it had for twenty-three years, precisely there, contained and complete in his mind to every space and shelf and door and stair-step, the main floor where he sprawled, the crowded basement, the second floor with the bedroom and long office and bath and sunroom and landing open to the stair and balcony rail and peaked ceiling of the third floor with the foam mat …