How Loveta Got Her Baby (11 page)

“Okay,” Bridie said, “but I better drink it for him. He's underage.”

“Drink it fast,” they said, “there's not much time left.”

“Oh no, what now?” Bridie said to the baby, under her breath, into the baby's ear.

She had one arm around Liam and the other hand was on the beer she'd been given. Then someone shook up another beer bottle and sprayed it in the air and all the spray came down over her head and on the baby's head in a fine mist. She wiped off the baby's face with the side of her cheek. Liam never cried at all.

Then she said, “Hey! None of that! Watch out for the baby!”

“Sorry,” they said, laughing some more, and they turned and sprayed the other way.

Then the crowd rose to their feet because here came the Raiders again. They moved the ball down into the Falcons' end. But they made a mistake. Justin Peach intercepted a pass. As soon as Justin Peach touched the ball, Bridie saw Otto Bond take off on the far side of the field. He was like one of those rockets that go into the sky on Victoria Day, even though he was still on the ground. Justin Peach was under pressure but he kicked the soccer ball over to Johnny Drake and then there it was, for the second time that day, the long arching pass with the tailwind, and Otto Bond was way downfield running it down. This time, determined, he shook off the three Raiders that were hounding him like they were gnats or bugs. He was knocked down in front of the net but he got up fast and with his right leg, he released the ball, and then fell backward to the grass.

That was it. The ball curved up and under the crossbar and the net bulged out. The goaltender lay on the ground like he was dead. Silence in the air. The referee waved his arms and he blew his whistle. The game was over. Bridie jumped back up to her feet.

“Get out of the view!” someone said.

“The view's over,” she said. “Can't you see that?”

She ran down the steps of the stadium with the baby in her arms and she ran across the track and out onto the field.

Be careful, she said to herself, you've had those two beers. She slowed a little. The baby was wrapped up tight in the shawl across her chest, safe as can be. Otto Bond saw her coming and he came over to her and even though the baby was in the way, she leaned up to him and she gave him a kiss. Beer does that, she figured but she didn't care. He was covered with dirt and sweat.

“Hey watch out,” said Otto Bond, “you'll squish the baby, he'll smother.”

He put his arms around her and they circled in a little dance.

“I don't think so,” said Bridie. “His head's free.”

“Well okay, I can see that now,” said Otto Bond.

He leaned back into Bridie and gave her a kiss, a longer one. If he tasted the beer from her lips, he didn't say anything.

“I'll take you home, give me a minute,” he said.

Then he ran over and joined the other boys who were celebrating. All the Raiders had walked off and the Falcons had the field to themselves. Otto Bond took off his shirt and swung it around his head like a pinwheel and he ran in circles and he did a flip and he landed on his feet.

“Look,” said Shawn Blagdon to the others, “Otto's gone ape-shit.”

While the Falcons danced around in the centre of the field, Bridie and the baby stood off to the side and watched. She felt a bit dizzy from the excitement. She was sure it wasn't the beer. Three of the fans who'd been sitting near came up to her, all at different times.

“You need a ride home, honey?”

“No, I'm fixed up here. I got a ride thanks.”

Then the security man came over with the stroller.

“You okay? You need a lift anywhere, I got a car.”

“No, no I'm okay,” she said, “thanks.”

Otto Bond took her home. He didn't have a car so they took the bus and they got off at a stop near her place and he walked her the rest of the way. He was still in his soccer outfit. People looked at him but it wasn't that unusual, on the bus or on the street, in Halifax, to see someone dressed like that, in a soccer uniform.

“Thanks,” she said, when they got to her place, “I had a great time and so did the baby.”

“Seeing you there, that was the best, Bridie, that made it the best for me. It wasn't the goals at all.”

“You mean that?”

“Cross my heart,” he said.

She believed him, as she should have believed him because he was telling the truth.

He left her there and he walked the rest of the way home, to his own place, where the others were already waiting. What a day it was, what a night. He had nothing to complain about. He was high in the air. As soon as he got home, without changing his clothes, he took the little dog out for a walk.

“I'll be back,” he said to the others.

He went to the playground in the park, to the far end. He reached up for the monkey bars. As the dog ran around in circles beneath him, barking, even though it was pitch black, Otto Bond swung there. He swung back and forth, and he swung higher and higher like he was a child again, maybe even like an orangutan would do, or a chimpanzee far off in the jungle of Sumatra. Or someone gone ape-shit.

Then he flipped through the air in a somersault and came down feet together in the sand. He stretched his arms upwards into the Halifax night.

He called the dog and felt the leash pull against his hand.

“Bridie,” he whispered to himself.

Then they went back to the party, to the pizza party, to Justin Peach, to his homemade sauce.

sculpin

IT WAS A
common thing to do on those long mid-summer days, when the sun was up for sixteen hours, when idleness brought them to the wharf with their bamboo rods and their lines of string: they hauled up sculpin after sculpin, sickly green and spiny “like a parboiled goat's head,” said Thomas Keeping; they held the sculpin's jaws shut tight with finger and thumb, and with a small flat stick, they rubbed the smooth belly, gently, until the fish began to swell like a party balloon, a victim of its own internal gases, trapped by what they called devilment; then sculpin after sculpin would be thrown high into the air, down onto the ebbing tide with a flat smack, to float head-down and belly-up in a flurry of small rocks, flesh exploding on impact, or, if spared by some mathematical chance, out the sculpin would float, clumped together by wind and current until the gulls came, their beaks made for ripping and pulling, or until the young fishermen saw, from the wharf, the distant slow black flap of the eagle, from the cliffs at Farmer's Cove, stretching out his talons as he, too, passed the summer days in his own way, a predator on idle, with plenty of time to whet, to kill.

rick-
          
shaw

THEY WALKED THROUGH
the front door of the coffee shop. There was a bit of a line-up so they joined it, and they watched the women in their uniforms moving around behind the counter. When they finally got their coffee, they walked over to an empty table near the window, and they sat down.

“I got it, we set him up. A rickshaw.”

“A rickshaw?”

“One of those Chinese taxis.”

“You mean one of those carts, people in the back, someone pulling like a horse?”

“That's it. Fill it full of tourists, charge money.”

“You seen that?”

“Victoria B.C. Big money maker out there.”

“Clyde? You think Clyde Grandy could pull a rickshaw?”

“Sure. See the sights, trot along the harbour. Talk it up, Clyde would, he'd say, you see up there? That's Signal Hill, here's the boats from far away, here's where they used to pull in the fish. When there was fish. Then he'd catch his breath, then clippety-clop, Duckworth Street end to end.”

There was something nice about the morning coffee ritual. Every day, they could let their minds go blank or, like today, they could let their dreams spin off into the air like pinwheels.

“Clyde pulls the rickshaw and he talks at the same time?”

“That's it. That's the only way. Tourists expect that, the palaver.”

“Sounds like hard work.”

“Well, that's true. It is hard work. That's how you do it though. I saw them out there, Victoria B.C.”

“Hard work, pull and talk at the same time.”

“For sure. No kidding. You learn to breathe easy, through the nose. That's my guess. That way there's no huffing or puffing.”

“Horses breathe through their nose.”

“Of course they do.”

“Looks bad, huffing and puffing.”

“I'll say. Customers wouldn't go for that, they'd feel bad.”

“Clients you mean.”

“Customers, clients, call them what you like.”

“On the other hand, maybe they'd tip more, the worse you look. Horses, they froth and sweat. Clyde, there's no way he'd do that. Froth at the mouth.”

“No, that's true. He'd pace himself. He's smart that way.”

“How much, I wonder, you could charge for the rickshaw ride?”

Now and then they'd get talking so fast, there was barely time for them to think. Their coffee sometimes just sat there and got lukewarm and they had to go back to the counter, spill out a bit and top up.

“Downtown? Charge twenty dollars bare minimum. Couldn't do it for less.”

“That's not bad money. Half an hour for that?”

“Imagine the upkeep on the horse. Feedbags. Twenty minutes, the harbour run. Charge more for the hill. Thirty, forty dollars for that, depending on the load.”

“The hill? Signal Hill? No way, no one could get one of those rickshaws up there.”

“You don't think?”

“He's got no muscles. You seen him with that shirt off?”

“Thin. Weasel-thin.”

“He's skin and bone for the most part.”

“Sinewy though.”

“Secret wells of strength, sometimes, with sinewy.”

“How high up, you figure, would Clyde have to go? If he could, say.”

“The very top, for forty dollars. He'd have to go all the way.”

“All the way up for the view, the breathtaking view.”

“That's what they calls it. No tourist would be satisfied with less. There'd be hell to pay, if he only got partway up.”

“Not sure why they call it breathtaking.”

“Me neither. Every day it's the same up there, more or less.”

The coffee shop was bordered on one side by a firehall, and on the other side by a row of houses made of wood. You could have been anywhere in the whole country, if you didn't look too far around. There was no obvious view of the ocean or the harbour, but there was a gull walking in the parking lot, stalking about like a courtesan. The gull looked real well fed, cocky, with a yellow beak and glinty eyes. He was there half the time, and half the time he was somewhere else.

“Cold up there at the top.”

“Real cold. All you see is the ocean.”

“Unless there's fog. Then there's nothing.”

“Half the time it rains.”

“But they don't know that, the tourists down in the harbour with the maps and the kids all crying, they don't know it's cold up there, do they?”

“No. That's right. They'd jump right in the rickshaw.”

“Happy as clams.”

“Clyde pulls the rickshaw straight up the hill.”

“With his sinewy strength, his untapped wells of power.”

“Forty dollars, thank you, ma'am, sir.”

“More tips too, he talks the whole way.”

“No way Clyde could do that. One or the other, not both. It's a long way up.”

“I walked it once. Well, half-way.”

For a minute, the two of them didn't say anything. They looked out the window of the coffee shop, and you could see that in their distant gaze, they were imagining Clyde Grandy. They were thinking about the skinny body he had, how he usually didn't talk a lot even when he wasn't pulling a rickshaw. With their coffee spoons, they idly stirred in more sugar, pouring it liberally from the container. It was getting warm. They loosened their scarfs and opened up the top buttons of their coats. Some of the wet dirt from their boots was now smeared on the tile floor, but that was expected. A boy with a mop and a bucket came around every hour or two.

“I wonder, rickshaws, they have brakes?”

“You just hold on to the bar. Real tight.”

“You don't let go.”

“That's it, that's the braking system. All models the same, last time I looked.”

“Then Clyde'd need insurance, right?”

“Insurance? There you go, I hadn't thought of that.”

“Me neither. Till now.”

“My guess is, though, that insurance is not real cheap.

Knowing those bastards.”

“Ups the cost for the businessman.”

“Bloodsuckers, parasites.”

“What if Clyde's up there, and those little muscles of his give out? His sinews snap.”

“Oh my oh my, spare me that.”

“Down comes the rickshaw from the the hill.”

“Trouble for the customers.”

“Real trouble.”

“Full speed, I can see it, the rickshaw in the air from the cliff, or down the road backwards, hits the rail by the water and up she goes high, high in the air.”

“Trouble for Clyde.”

“Trouble for us, we're the backers.”

“That's why insurance.”

“I got it. We put life jackets on the passengers, first off, then if they end up in the water, they float. They can be seen, they can be rescued.”

“You mean, before they get in the rickshaw, we make them put on life jackets?”

“That's right.”

“How'd they feel about that, I wonder.”

“Not too good. That's my guess, but tourists like that sort of thing. Adventure travel. I read about it.”

“I got it. Make the rickshaw look like a dory. Natural then, life jackets.”