How Loveta Got Her Baby (8 page)

Then Queenie reached into her purse and she pulled out a roll of paper money as big as her hand, maybe bigger, a big bank elastic on it tighter than a miser.

“Jeez Queenie, Jeez Queenie, Jeez Queenie, what the heck,” was all Henry and Aaron said.

They sounded like two accordions tuning up.

Aaron was as good as his word, he gave the reward money to Queenie right there. He smacked his lips, peeled off a thousand dollars from the money roll and handed it back to her.

That's how Eunice and Henry and Queenie got their nest egg for the tar sands. They put it in the bank. That's how Aaron Stoodley went out and made an offer on the convenience store.

That's how Eunice and Henry ended up owing their little girl, Pasquena, known as Queenie, one thousand dollars. They borrowed it from her.

“We'll pay you back when you're sixteen, or twenty-one,” they said.

“Lucky we bought that purse,” Henry said to Eunice later, when they were in bed, “instead of that cheap little locket.”

She knew what he meant. At K-Mart, Eunice had wanted to buy the locket. Henry liked the purse. Queenie didn't care one way or the other but what did Henry know about girls, about presents? Anyway, they did buy the little purse.

“See, Eunice, I'm trying to figure out how Queenie could have jammed all that money of Aaron's into that little locket you wanted to buy.”

They were curled up close together, Henry behind her.

“The one with the clasp, the little clasp that looked like it would break right off? Eunice?”

There was no answer. She was asleep.

Fact is, if they'd gone and bought the locket, they'd have been just as happy. They might have had a different story to tell though, and a little less money in the long run. And Aaron Stoodley wouldn't really have cared either. He'd gotten run over and lived to tell about it. How much greater than money was that?

tele
-       
scope

FOR AT LEAST
three months now, Hilda Cluett had stood to one side of her kitchen window and watched the teacher, Albert May, eat his dinner, either outside on the school steps when the weather was fine or, when it turned cold, she could see him with his feet up on his desk, and it was always the same: Cabot bread, peanut butter and jam, a thermos of tea—amazing, she thought, the detail she could see through the old telescope, though it had to be tipped this way and that when the reflection of the sky shimmered, totally amazing it was; sometimes, believe it or not, even through her lace curtains, she could read his watch for the time of day and see the rise and fall of his breathing, which often seemed synchronous to her own, and all of this, mind you, through this one small telescope—steady now—all brass, left to her thirteen years before when her husband, John Cluett, fell from the deck of his dragger into Halifax Harbour, weighed down by three sweaters, a woolen overcoat, oilskins, heavy boots, a mortgage of three thousand dollars, and a photo in his wallet of Hilda Cluett, then Hilda Hickey, age twenty-one, out at the barasway, squinting into what must have been a high sun, so unguarded she was.

the
house
-   
painters

“
HE COULD PAINT
houses.”

“Clyde?”

“He could use the money.”

“For sure.”

“We could set him up.”

“He'd need a ladder. Does Clyde go up ladders?”

“Not sure. I've seen him on a stepstool.”

“Like in the kitchen?”

“That's it.”

“How'd he look?”

“Fine. Steady. Mind you it's not that high.”

“What else?”

“He'd need a hat with a brim.”

“The brim, it keeps the paint off.”

“That's right. Lots of times you look up.”

“He'd need one of them flat chisels too, for peeling off the old paint.”

“A scraper.”

“That's it, start of every job. Scrape the old paint off.”

“That's the hard part.”

“Too hard, you ask me.”

“The rollers for the walls, that's easy.”

“Clyde could do rollers.”

“Trouble is, you can't use the rollers on clapboard. It's a bad fit.”

“That's the truth. For that you need a brush, the old kind.”

“The kind with a hand-grip.”

“So we sets him up with a ladder, a hat with a brim, a brush or two, and a chisel.”

“He needs an outfit too.”

“Like baggy pants?”

“Baggy pants, baggy shirt, hat with a brim.”

“Keep the T-shirt clean.”

“Clyde wears them shirts for days and days.”

“
Save the Great Auk
.”

“I'm sick of that one.”

“Me too. Worse shirt ever. I could care less about the Great Auk. It's a bird, isn't it?”

“It was. It's not anymore.”

“You know that Clyde, there's a boy needs too much help. High maintenance, that's what he is.”

“Them stories he writes? They're useless for money.”

“I heard that. Never tried it myself.”

“Don't, is my advice. You'd perish.”

“Writers drink.”

“Not Clyde.”

“True enough. Rare you see Clyde with a drink.”

“So the plan is, we set him up as a housepainter, we teach him how to do it.”

“Sounds good. Good to help Clyde out.”

“How much would he make?”

“Can't pay him by the hour, he's way too slow.”

“You'd go under.”

“For sure.”

“Let's think about the best place to start.”

“Shea Heights.”

“Hamilton Avenue, I'd say.”

“Why there?”

“Worn-out houses there, lots of them on the hill.”

“Fine.”

“This is how it works. You and I, we do the quote. Hamilton Avenue, any old house, there's one, we stop the truck, turn the wheels into the curb.”

“Turn the wheels?”

“It's steep. That way, no runaway vehicles. It's happened.”

“To you?”

“Once, and that's enough. Anyway, then we look up at the house like the experts we are.”

“Supposed experts.”

“No, real experts, that's how you pull it off. You stand back, you take a look. There, the back side of that house, on the east, that's the sunrise side, it's all peeled up. On the front side west, there's five layers of paint, one on top of the next. There's pink, then red, then blue, then white and then there's the oldest one of all. Yellow. Dig at it with the knife.”

“Pocket-knife. I got one.”

“That's fine, that's all you need. Then the windowsills. They're all messed up with the dry rot. You run your hand along there, splinters.”

“That's no good.”

“Then inside we go. Hi there Mrs. So-and-So, let's say Mrs. Ferris, open up the windows please, the old sash windows. Try again. They're stuck solid, fifty years. That don't make it easy. What about the fancy, fine work? Back outside again. There's the electric meter, you got to paint all around it, and the round window up there with the harbour view, you need a steady hand for that all right. The mailbox right by the front door, picture of a whale on it? It'd take an hour with a tiny brush to smooth around that. You need a wipecloth for the little drops. They're not cheap. Top it off, old Mrs. Ferris, she's got the front cement footstep painted kind of a dark red.”

“For that, clean that off, you need chemicals.”

“Damn right. The kicker though is the overhanging roof. Try to paint that. Three feet it hangs out. Up on the ladder, high up there, you got to lean back, way back.”

“Add lots of money for that. Danger pay.”

“Then we eyeball the square footage of the whole house, measure here and there with the tape, add it all up on a piece of lined paper.”

“Clyde can't make a quote. His mind don't work that way.”

“For sure. That's why we do it.”

“So you and I, we set him up, we make the quotes, we drives Clyde to the job, we leaves him there till 5 p.m.”

“How much for us?”

“Eighty percent for the backers, I say.”

“Say the quote's two thousand dollars.”

“That's way too cheap.”

“That's how you get the job, that's how it works. Lowball. That'll be two thousand dollars, Mrs. Ferris, is what you say.”

“You write it out?”

“Oh no, that's fatal. Verbal quote, a handshake, that's all.”

“Discount for seniors, they all do that.”

“Darn right. Widow discount too. Ten percent for each.”

“She's a widow?”

“Most of them are.”

“Then you sets Clyde to work.”

“He scrapes off the front of the house.”

“The up-high part?”

“That's why the ladder. Start up high I say.”

“Then we come back, Clyde's still up there with the chisel, and we says, Mrs. Ferris, my dear, the dry rot on this one window frame is going to eat up the whole quote I gave you last week. We needs a re-figuring.”

“Twelve thousand dollars.”

“That's it. At least. Otherwise, I'm afraid, Mrs. Ferris, we're off to Mount Pearl with the crew.”

“The crew?”

“Well, Clyde. Clyde's the crew. Not much of a crew, but he is the crew.”

“There's no dry rot in Mount Pearl, Mrs. Ferris, all the houses there is brand new. All you needs in Mount Pearl, Mrs Ferris, is a roller and a tray. They don't have none of this old clapboard, they got vinyl. This old house costs a lot of money just for the up-keep.”

“She might say, that's the trouble, living here in the old part of town.”

“Then you says, Sorry to hear about the death of Mr. Ferris, Mrs. Ferris.”

“It's been ten years, she says.”

“Ten years, that's a long time.”

“It's a long time but still she cries.”

“Clyde'd be some mad, if he heard us talk like this.”

“That's true.”

“He's got a heart of gold.”

“That's for sure.”

“He knew she was a widow, he'd work for free.”

“Clyde would do that. That's like Clyde.”

“So we keep it secret. We say, Clyde, don't you go talk to this old lady. She lost her mind years back, she tells lies.”

“She tells lies?”

“Not only does she tell lies, but she poisons food with rat poison.”

“Rat poison?”

“Not only does she poison food with rat poison, she got fleas inside.”

“Inside what?”

“Inside the house. She got ten cats.”

“Why would you go tell Clyde that?”

“You know Clyde, say she invites him in, cup of tea. He'd go in, he'd listen, he'd get nothing done. It's for Clyde's own good, we keep him in the dark.”

“You're right. Why the fleas?”

“Fleas is for sure when you got ten cats.”

“Mathematics.”

“That's right.”

“First day then, we leave Clyde, we get back, what's he done?”

“He got the ground-floor windowsills scraped down. Perfect smooth. Nothing else.”

“All day, two windowsills.”

“That's why Clyde works by the job, not by the hour.”

“That's it.”

“First week on the job it's nothing but scraping down. Clyde and the paint chisel.”

“Ladder training too.”

“You ever seen a bucket of paint come down?”

“What do you mean, come down?”

“I mean a bucket of paint from the top of the ladder. It's sitting there and then Clyde makes the wrong move and there's a bucket of trim, purple trim, turning over and over in the air.”

“I seen that once but it wasn't Clyde.”

“The paint, the trim, you got to watch out.”

“I can see that. Strong wind, the purple trim flies out of the can like it's caught in one of them pinwheels.”

“Then it hits the ground.”

“Boom.”

“Mrs. Ferris then, you hope she's got one of them diseases of the eyes.”

“Cataracts.”

“That'll do. She wears them google glasses.”

“That's it, that's what you hope.”

“So out she steps from the door and she says, what was that bang I heard?”

“Oh that bang, dear? That's nothing, the truck door got took by the wind, is all.”

“Meantime the paint's up to your knees and all over the side of the house.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Ferris, sorry.”

“Who says that? Me?”

“No, that's what we hear Clyde shouting, from up high. I can hear him now.”

“And she'd say, sorry for what, young man?”

“That's when we'd say, real fast, we'd talk soft so Clyde couldn't hear, we'd say, the boy up on the ladder, Mrs. Ferris, he said he's sorry to see the condition of the roof.”

“The roof? What's wrong with the roof?”

“It's got holes in it, for the water to get in, Mrs. Ferris. Storm damage from the ice and snow. Common thing here. Shame what it does. It needs fixing.”

“My my, she might say, I don't know, I don't know.”

“That's right, that's what she'd say.”

“Hard to take bad news, you're that old.”

“They get used to it.”

“For another four thousand dollars, Mrs. Ferris, that's a roof we fix up watertight. Mr. Ferris, he's alive, he'd roll in his grave, he could see that leaky roof over your head. You being a widow. There there, don't snuffle. Clyde, you got one of them drip rags? Throw it down.”

“Then in we go with the old lady, we ask for a glass of water.”

“Thirsty? Us?”

“No no, up we go to the second floor, by the window where Clyde's at. We throw the water from the cup, up against the ceiling. Mrs. Ferris, Mrs. Ferris, look at this, we cry out. It's leaking wet.”