Saltwater Cowboys (14 page)

“I'm going to be sick,” she whispered.

Jack held her hair while she vomited and then carried her back to bed.

The ringing of the pipes woke her up hours later. They were reacting, she knew it.

“They're just popping, it's cold,” Jack said sluggishly and hauled her back to his side of the bed.

She had to calm down. Breathe. Curl tighter into Jack's warm body. Of course the pipes weren't clogged. Of course the baby wasn't angry about being flushed and had decided to hold the drainpipes hostage. Of course not.

Angela felt like she was going insane. Ambushed by sleep, she fell into a fitful doze and clung to Jack until the morning.

I
n the morning she woke up and ran down the hallway to check on the children. Their beds were empty.

“They stayed the night at Wanda's, remember?” Jack said.

“I didn't,” she said and wilted into his arms.

He held her for a moment then led her back to bed. They stayed in bed for most of the day, quietly holding one another. Angela rubbed her hand across her chest. Her breasts were taut and heavy. She'd nursed every one of her girls, despite pressure to feed them formula as the other mothers in Brighton had done. Angela had loved the little tugs on her breast, how the mouth had moved so rapidly, the muscles a vibrato of movement on automatic while they slept and ate. After three children she'd been ready for another, didn't mind the heaviness in her breasts, was looking forward to the weight of the little lump in her arms, cradled against the breast, toughening up the nipple while nursing. She loved their little mouths, crying for milk, desperate for a feed. They had the red-fleshed gaping mouths of baby birds.

She loved being a mother. She had never done anything else; she'd gone straight from her mother's house to the small peacock-blue clapboard Jack had bought. She'd never had a job; her two older sisters had gone to work early to help out their mother when their father died, but not her, she'd been coddled.

It infuriated her how much she'd loved this baby — why couldn't she be blasé about it? Why couldn't she see it as just a clump of flesh like the more liberal women of the world? The forward thinkers, the women who wanted to see more women in mining, the women who admired Thatcher's position yet despised Thatcher's policies? Just a simple woman she was, liked a clean house, a fresh baked chocolate cake in a plastic Tupperware container, and her children squabbling or not, loose at her feet.

Jack was sound asleep next to her. She lifted his heavy arm off her torso and went to the kitchen for a cup of tea. She turned on the stove, left the kettle to boil, and turned on the television. All over the screen, babies — baby commercials on every channel. The image of a newborn being powdered broke her heart. The scrunched-up scarlet face, flailing limbs and hiccup-like cry, she wanted to reach in the screen and tear the child away, keep it all to herself.

When Sheila would see a cute infant in Brighton, she would tell Angela to distract the mother over and over again like an official announcing an alert so Sheila could tear the child away and they could keep it for themselves. It would make Angela laugh.

Now this cavern in her womb, this emptiness and her stretched-out, fattened abdomen noxious with hormones, as empty as a blasted hole in the rock. All the food in the world wouldn't numb it, all the drink won't either. She could drink all the red wine she wanted, until the gums in the gaps in her teeth were as dark as black cherries. The pain was like a rake trapped in a thick patch of dry grass, inescapable without a significant amount of pulling and tearing. Her nerves, her mind, her spirit all felt like they were being raked. Pulled and torn.

The kettle boiled and Jack was at the stove and lifted it from the lava-coloured coil. He made a pot and they sipped away at it all day until Jack went to get the girls, and the hard work of telling them what had happened began.

T
he next weekend the town gathered at the Civic Centre.
WELCOME TO FOXVILLE'S FIRST ANNUAL WINTER CARNIVAL
,
the sign in the gymnasium read. The kindergarten teacher, Miss Adams, had made the sign last week specifically for the festivities. She had requested that the children paint the graphics and asked the shy new girl, Katherine McCarthy — who'd started the school year a few weeks late and therefore tended to hover quietly on the edges of the jungle gym as the other kids played loudly during recess — to paint the bright red coat of the mascot, Fritzy the Fox. Katie had been delighted. She brushed the sign carefully with pumpkin orange and a holly-berry red and spoke animatedly with Lucy Douglas, a classmate who was filling the sign with feathery green strokes of her brush, representing the aurora borealis. In a few hours Miss Adams was happy to see Katherine giggling and chatting with the rest of the students.

Many of town's citizens — especially young parents with two or three preschoolers — sat on brown pullout bleachers in the gymnasium of the Civic Centre. They were fussing with their young children's juice and biscuits, patting diapers for any changes in warmth or density, and giving older siblings handfuls of change to buy homemade treats, chips, and juice.

The gym was awash with red balloons. They were tied to the children's wrists with white ribbon, taped to doorways, and twisted up in animal shapes that were meant to represent foxes.

There was a collapsible stage with microphones, instruments for a four-piece band, speakers, and games for the children at one end of the gym, ice fishing, they called it. Each child was given a little plastic fishing rod to toss over a white divider, an “iceberg,” and then someone hidden behind the screen hooked a little plastic toy onto the line. The children were delighted. Maggie and Katie couldn't believe their luck. “Every time the line goes over,” they told Angela, “we get a prize!”

There were other games: leg-wrestling contests, colouring contests, and for the adults outside the civic centre, tea-boiling contests. Supplied with only teabags, a pot, and two matches, teams of adults must build a fire in the snow, find sticks and twigs — hoping that some of them would be dry amongst the kindling available in the wet mulch — start a fire, melt fresh snow for water, and brew a hot cup of tea to satisfy the judge.

There were bannock-baking contests. Teams had to make a batch of bannock using the flour, salt, and lard provided, and cook it on a stick over that same slow, weak fire. There were also flour-packing contests. Men competed to see who could carry the heaviest bag of flour on their backs. The men had to walk ten feet carrying a sack of heavy flour, moaning and groaning under the excruciating pressure. There were moose- and geese-calling contests; the winner of this particular game was the one who was the best at mimicking the sound of a mating moose or a flock of geese. The next day the dogsled races would start. The races were held on a small river a few miles away from Peace River, with packs of husky dogs and teams competing from as far away as Churchill, Manitoba, and Whitehorse, Yukon.

At two o'clock, Bobbi Lake strolled into the gym. Her tight jeans were partially covered by a bulky black ski jacket with sporty race car decals and stripes on the chest and arms. Heavy, sultry makeup was caked on her eyelids and frosty red cheeks. Her suede mini-boots rolled low around her ankles. She tossed her blonde hair and wiped fur from her sleeves.

She'd been at the fire station that morning. She'd set up a temporary animal shelter for some of the stray dogs that had been found nosing around the town dump. When she'd read an article about the woebegone dogs in the town paper, she immediately volunteered to nurse the animals back to health and find proper homes for them.

Bobbi's shelter had taken up residence in a large storage room at the back of the station. She'd ordered cages from the hardware store and made bedding out of old sheets and hamster wood chips. She'd also set up small cages for other types of animals. She knew that when people found out she'd set up a shelter, parents would be coming in and dropping off cats, birds, and bunnies, pets they tried to keep but couldn't on account of having young children in the house.

Twice before she'd taken friends' animals; her neighbours in Thunder Bay had gotten a kitten for their three-year-old. The child had liked to squeeze the kitten's neck until its tongue stuck out. When the child threw the kitten in the toilet and tried to flush it, they'd begged Bobbi to take it. Socks the cat was still with Bobbi. He hovered amongst her socks in the dresser drawer half the time, too afraid to get out and roam around.

Bobbi never understood why some women wanted children — and always so many, not just one, but two, three, four, and sometimes five children. Children just grew up and turned on you, she had always thought. First they pinned you down so all you could think about was their well-being. You'd put them ahead of yourself for the most part, then they'd chide you for being overprotective and eventually deserted you. Bobbi preferred the company of animals; they were noble and loyal, protective yet subservient. She was the master of an animal, the one in control.

As she walked through the gym she paused to watch the children ice-fish. Despite her dislike for children, a smile crept onto her face as two young girls removed their toys from the ends of their tiny plastic fishing rods. The blonde child and the other, small, dark, and wide-eyed, were adorable. She couldn't help but be charmed by them. They looked like Jack, she thought, and assumed that they were indeed his children. She hadn't seen him all week. He hadn't met her at their usual spot on the bench for lunch. They hadn't been assigned to the same stopes. She hadn't seen him in the lunchroom or as she passed through security after their shift ended. She had been glum all week. She wasn't sure what the next thing to say or do would be. That night they'd behaved hastily, and it was awkward, to say the least, but their passion had been undeniable, she thought. She wondered if there would be anything between them in the future. The thought of him leaving his wife for her hovered in the back of her mind.

She crossed the room and scanned the bleachers, looking for Jack, and found him crammed in amongst the other families, waiting for the afternoon concert to begin. His floppy black hair was tucked behind his ears. He wore a fresh new red flannel plaid shirt and well-worn jeans. His face looked soft yet ashen. He sat with his knuckles bunched on his knees. She panicked, wondering if what they had done caused him to feel guilty. Angela sat beside him, her back turned toward a child. When he got up she rushed toward him.

“Jack,” she shouted and put her arms around his waist. “How are ya?”

Jack pried her arms from his waist. Her grip made him feel caught in a net with a pincher insect he wanted to squash. He stood limply before her, his crooked foot twitching, and asked how she was.

“Fine! No — wait, yes I'm fine, but I would like to see you again. Wouldn't you like to get together?

“My wife is sick.”

Sick?
Bobbi thought and her perky smile vanished. She looked up at Angela seated on the bleachers, her eyes smoky with hurt. “She doesn't look very sick,” she said and smiled half-heartedly.

“I love my wife.”

“Why were you with me?”

“I made a mistake.”

“There's more between us than a bad decision,” she said knowingly.

“A work friendship that crossed the line. I'm sorry,” he said and walked away.

Bobbi skulked to a seat on the bleachers. She sat alone, ashamed and angry with Jack.

Jack scurried to the washroom and exhaled loudly in the stall. In the white and silver sterile room he felt uncomfortable. It was too cold and clean — neither a scuff nor a stain on the floor, walls, or sink. When was a men's washroom ever this clean?
There should be the stink of piss, toilet paper on the floor, muck on the sink, because we're all a bunch of filthy pigs,
he thought,
every last dirty dog one of us
. He grabbed the faucet and expected grime to flow freely from his fingertips. He scrubbed his hands furiously with the bubble-gum pink soap. He couldn't wash away the feeling of filth that he carried like a shroud.

He stared at himself in the gleaming new mirror and recoiled. He looked like a sneaky raccoon: black hair matted at the crown, beady eyes shifty and yet fearful, surrounded by engorged black rings of flesh. Katie had once told him — after reading from her children's science magazine — that raccoons were once believed to be part of the dog family.
A nocturnal dog
, he thought,
that's what I am
. He'd been foraging for comfort. He hadn't wanted to cry in front of Angela because of the bar brawl — nothing worse than crying in front of a woman, especially your wife, Peter had once said — so he buried himself in Bobbi's flesh like she was a strong oak tree with warm hollows and crevices prepared to keep him safe.
How could I have done this to my wife? Why didn't I just go home and let her see me cry?

In truth, he'd used Bobbi like she was a bag of household waste — left on the curb with the lid of the silver garbage can askew for a raccoon to gain easy access. He looked at his feet, expecting to see a ring of ash appear. He felt so dirty, he thought he'd spread grease, muck, and filthy debris throughout the room merely by breathing.

Jack had never betrayed Angela before, or any other girl he'd dated. There'd been Louise Payne, who tried to tempt him away from Cheryl Courage after the high-school graduation dance. They had been drinking all night at the swimming hole and she'd kissed him and rubbed his bare chest. She'd asked him to sleep in her tent while Louise was at the canoe hauling a beer from the ice. Jack had felt a stirring for her, with her long straight blonde hair and black eyeliner oily on the inner rim of her eyelids, but he hadn't taken her up on her offer, despite the doe-eyed affection she held for him.

Jack hated the way Bobbi looked at him, like he was the only hope in her world.

Why does she look at me like that?

Angela didn't even see him. She didn't see anything at all, he imagined — she'd been lost in thought all week, falsely cheerful but focused on the children as if their next breath would be their last. He stared at himself. Did she secretly see what he'd done? If she did see the hounded dog in his eyes, she hadn't said a word. She'd said very little over the past week.

Wanda wouldn't let him talk to Peter when he'd called the morning after the fight. When Peter returned to work the gashes on his face had been sewn shut with black thread. He'd tried to laugh it off, drunk and fighting over the hockey game, he'd said, and the other miners had slapped him on the back and cheered. At the end of their shift, Jack had slipped Peter a few hundred dollars. Peter had tried to smile, but the taut stitches at the corner of his mouth began to tear, so he gave Jack a quick pert shake of the hand instead.

Jack and Angela were now out of the allotted money for Lily's diapers. He would see if he could get overtime next week. He could work a few night shifts — forage through the rock for his family, and for Peter's. He'd have to be clear with Bobbi; she needed to know that he could never again do what they'd done on Friday night.

As he scurried out the bathroom, head low, he realized he'd forgotten to get Angela a cup of tea with double cream and double sugar from the canteen.

Peter and Wanda entered the gym. Peter's voice, once full of vigour and rakish rebelliousness, was reduced to a mumble as he greeted Angela and Jack, limping to a seat beside them. The pulpy bruises were recovering; scars from stitches on his cheeks and forehead glistened freshly, little pink pinches on his skin with white tracks separating one side of flesh from the other. They made him look old, tired, and defeated.

He tried to force an easy-going smile to hide the prickly burr of paranoia that grew in his mind.
What are they all staring at? They're all talking about me. They know I'm weak.
He smiled lightly and raised his bushy brown eyebrows as high as he could.
Rats
, he thought,
I can stomp on all of you, so don't look at me like I'm some stray dog
. Peter knew he could take on each and every one present, rip them apart with his big bare hands. But those salesmen, the cowboys from Calgary, they'd approached him when he was drunk and caught him by surprise.

They were the strongest now; he'd have to get in that pack somehow. He'd have to find a way. He couldn't handle pity from strangers.
I will do whatever it takes
, he promised himself. Right now all that was required was an affable demeanour — the ability to laugh it all off as a good old boy brawl. But the stone that had settled in his gut was a shield hiding the truth from everyone, the truth of the pain of his defeat, the truth of the pain of losing all of his money to a two-bit con artist. He'd even kept it hidden from the one who knew him best: Jack. It was easy to fool Jack, though. How else did Jack really think Peter consistently won at card games? He would bet Jack actually believed it was luck or skill. It was neither, Peter knew, nothing but cheating and cunning. That's what he'd been the best at in Brighton, simple out-and-out cheating. But here he'd been made a fool of in nothing short of a month or so. He hadn't dreamed of this at all. It hadn't occurred to him that his family would encounter such misfortune. He hated what it was doing to Wanda. She'd reverted to some caricature of herself, or the way she thought of herself now: a frumpy housewife with nothing. He'd told her this week; he had to. She had cried and screamed at him for days.

Wanda stood beside him now with one bulky winter boot on the bleacher hunched over the other, untying the laces. “We won the tea boiling contest. I threw in four extra tea bags right before the judge came around. My teammates were furious. The judge took a sip and said ‘Finally, someone who knows how to make a good strong cup of tea.' I turned to my teammates and said, ‘Don't ever think a Newfoundlander don't know nothing about making tea.'”