Smoke (6 page)

Buster's about to turn and head into the woods when Jelly Bean's slim figure and silky blond ponytail appear once more, this time in a second-floor window. Her poodle skirt and sweater are both lime green, and from where she's standing behind a clean pane of glass she resembles one of the mints her mother gives out in a large glass jar on the counter at the hardware store. Fresh and shiny and too flawless to be real. Then he notices that her normally scrawny frame has filled out since he last saw her. She is beautiful, he thinks.

Jelly Bean lifts her hand tentatively, opens it wider, and Buster sees in it a stop sign, a warning. He turns without acknowledging her for a second time, and heads off. Chuck you, he thinks. Chuck you Donny and Ivan, all of you. Chuck this whole stinkin' place! He stomps and kicks at tall grass along the side of the road for a good twenty minutes, trying to shake the sense of mutation that engulfs him. On every kiln, on every farm he passes he finds family names staring back, and in those unavoidable letters a reminder of what a prison life can be.

He winds alongside the park and the river where nothing has changed, where familiarity should offer comfort. He grows angrier because familiarity feels like a luxury he can no longer afford, and comfort is merely luck or self-deception. The pine and maple and oak that have stood, more or less, in the same posture for decades appear to be lording it over him, their branches like skeletal arms waving
ha ha ha!
Buster kneels at the riverbank and tosses stones at carp sleeping near the surface, tries to ping a couple in the head but misses. He could be a hotshot too, he thinks. The way Ivan and Donny are. The way Hank is and he used to be. He looks down at the surface of the river and finds the sky, the most reliable of all heaven's creations, churning and cackling like a blue-faced witch.

Ivan and Donny are boys who make trouble together. “Those darned boys,” his mother would say, half disapproving and half creamy-dreamy impressed. It could be Ivan telling crude stories about his twin sister, Susan, or setting George Walker's watering troughs over-end until the hogs were snorting so fiercely that you'd swear a slaughter was on. It could be Donny hiding his sister's cat, convincing her that the mangy thing was killed by a rabid bull or smashed flat by a car. Buster used to be one of them, a prankster known more for his shenanigans than any true accomplishment.
Now look at me,
he thinks. His friends are still making mischief together while he's sick with envy that thickens in the pit of his stomach like sourdough bread. He didn't know he had it in him to be this angry but here he is, stomping through the countryside ready for a fight.

Well, as Hank would say if he'd been at school to witness what happened, “Ivan's a wise guy and Donny's a stinking bastard who sold you out.” Yes sir, he's had long enough to mull it over and it's been confirmed; Ivan is the same Ivan he's always been—indifferent, callous—but Donny, it turns out, is a good-for-nothing traitor and first chance Buster gets he's gonna let him have it.

At an early age tobacco had pressed him and Ivan together, pressing so hard at times that it felt like a collision. Ivan's father and his own were often at odds—most recently because Tom is pushing hard to negotiate the new tobacco marketing board just when Len has found his rhythm on the land and made contacts. Len Rombout is the sole member of his family in the region, having moved with his wife from Leamington when Ivan and Susan were still too young for school. Len's money is new money so he's insecure and flashes it around whenever he has the chance. Occasionally Buster has found himself continuing his father's battle though today he wonders why he should bother. But Donny is a different matter. Donny is a friend Buster
chose
. He too was born and bred in Smoke though the Brysons live in a rented house on Dover Street. Bob Bryson works as a primer during harvest most years, and the rest of the time finds odd jobs—this and that. Brick laying, equipment repairs, electrical; whatever he can drum up between his drinking binges. And though Donny's father isn't wealthy or a grower, it's never mattered one iota to Buster. He and Donny have swapped comic books, laughed at the same movies. Mooned Ivan and Hank. When younger they played Cowboys and Indians and jumped off the top of Buster's garage, pretending it was a sacred mountain. They dug elaborate snow tunnels in the winter and waged war on other boys. They spent time, the two of them, fishing. Buster and Donny versus the whole world is as old a game as boys themselves. Sure all three fellas hung out together, smoked their first cigarettes in the old tree fort, drank, looked at girlie magazines and raced their bicycles, but when they went their separate ways it was understood that Ivan was on his own again and Donny was to follow Buster. In fact Donny would eat shit off Buster's shoes if Buster told him to. At least that's what Buster used to believe. His dad's a shiftless drunk, he tells himself now. Can't count on a Bryson to stand upright. What did I expect?

Buster still remembers as clear as day when he and Hank talked Donny into snooping on Susan Rombout. Early one morning they rode into the village on their bicycles, met up with Donny and pedalled up the hill to the Rombouts' farm. They stood a tall wooden ladder against the side of the house so Hank, taking his turn, could climb up to Susan's bedroom and watch her dress. Ivan turned up out of nowhere in a blind rage, shoved Buster away from his watchman's station at the bottom of the ladder, swore at Donny. He kicked the ladder out from under Hank's legs causing Hank to fall so fast that he couldn't see Susan's horrified face in the window before he came crashing down on top of Donny. Buster was doubled over, holding his gut. It
was
pretty funny come to think of it. A big tickle. But it's just another example of how Donny can be talked into anything no matter how lame. Yes, he's a toady of the very first order. Hank's arm got broke in two places that day and Susan didn't speak to any of them for a long time, but guess who stuck up for Donny when Ivan threatened to break both his legs if he ever stepped within a two-mile radius of his sister again? Who shouted down Ivan when he called Donny a lard ass? Buster that's who. And who popped Ivan square in the kisser? Hank. So, where in Sam Hill is Donny now, the one time he, Buster McFiddie, needs someone to watch
his
back? Nowhere, that's where.

The highway is visible through the trees and silent except for the occasional car or truck speeding past and then it sounds as if a zipper is being ripped open leaving a seam of road exposed. Buster wishes it would open wider, all the way, and swallow him whole. He stops and looks ahead to a sign in the distance: “Welcome to Smoke. Population 507.”

He marches and marches, pressing up against the edges of his small world until morning bleeds into afternoon under the stern sunshine. The countryside is loud, an endless cacophony that starts his headache back. The gravel under his boots crunches like popped corn. Crows squabble over treetops, dragonflies with pretty blue bodies buzz around like small motorized fans and the trees in the nearby forest whisper, shout and dance maniacally in the breeze. Heading towards Arthur's Corners where the Old Coal Road will meet Highway 59, Buster thinks that maybe he'll carry on to Little Lake and never return. He could walk it, no question. His legs still work just fine. Or maybe he'll continue south and eventually reach Delhi. Smoke doesn't miss him. Why not keep going?

Getting to Windsor, where Doc John said he crossed when he left Michigan, would take days walking Highway 3, but he's got time. Maybe the doctor
was
dragged along on a rum-running vessel to treat the injured, Buster thinks, or held at gunpoint and made to smuggle booze in his black bag. Maybe he really
had,
as he said, witnessed some poor sop's body being dumped off the Ambassador Bridge? Naah. But what would it feel like to step across a border like that, Buster wonders. Right away, he knows. It would feel like being on the edge of time, in a no man's land, with no way back. He knows that because, well, he's there already isn't he? Homeless in a way.

He trudges up and down the other side of Palmer's Hill. The land here feels strange beneath his boots, the personalities of each farm palpable through the shape and contour of dirt underfoot, the holes in the road, bumps in the earth, through the colour of the fields. Each farmer's aspiration is as evident to Buster as the pig shit fuming off George Walker's place. George's troughs, fifty yards away, are lined in rows of loud grunting and groaning. The hogs sound like a town hall meeting of seniors snarling local politics through their pipes. Rombout's place comes upon him next and their “Private Property” sign stuck up at the entrance to the drive makes him even more defiant. A dirty-white flatbed is parked beside the house. Buster follows closely by the ditch at the side of the road and runs his outstretched hand through the feathery weeds growing there. He grabs a handful and pulls several stalks up and out of the earth.

His black boots begin to weigh him down like anchors dragging a sinking ship. He's been walking for hours, the longest he's walked in six months, and he is exhausted. Blisters form on his heels like small bleeding flames. The low voices of cows in the pastures soothe his aching head and he is sleepy from heat and dehydration. He pushes himself, and notices how the road underfoot feels harder and the air unusually arid for fall. The earth warms as the sun moves directly overhead and rich nutrients rise up through a blurry haze of gravel. He also realizes as he walks that he longs for school, misses his friends and science experiments, making things bubble and blow up. He misses high jump and jogging around the track. He even misses history class where the past has always felt much duller than the present. He doesn't miss home.

Finally, he reaches Arthur's Corners and is faced with a decision: north or south? All their lives divide here into sandy soil and rich clay loam. He hesitates and stares directly up at the sky, shutting his eyes to the blinding light. What would've happened to him if no one had ever grown tobacco? If his father hadn't. His retinas sting and his patchwork skin pulls taut like a canvas sack. This place doesn't belong to me any more than I belong to it, he thinks. I belong to the fire now. He takes a step forward and then stops. How will strangers react to his face? A hot fist clenches in his gut. There is no leaving, nowhere to turn, so he swivels and stomps back along the Old Coal Road exactly as he came.

By the time Buster wanders onto Doc John's porch on Main Street his new blue and yellow shirt is unbuttoned to the third hole, though he doesn't remember undoing it, the waist is hanging out one side of his blue jeans, his sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, his hands are damp and dirty and he is parched.

The Grays live smack in the village centre, in a sparkling white wood frame house with a wrap-around porch. Number 237 Main Street. Company walks up the drive and enters through a screen door at the side leading directly into Alice's kitchen, though patients always ring for Doc John at the front door off the veranda where the gold nameplate reads “John Gray, M.D.” Alice is working inside the house on lesson plans for her Sunday schoolers and writing up minutes from the last Violet Rebekah's meeting while she waits for Hazel Johnson to arrive. Together they will begin a quilt for the sesquicentennial. In the past, Alice has assisted with her husband's paperwork, booked medical appointments and answered the telephone. The calls are still coming in from all over the region, although she's been whispering into the receiver of late: “No new patients right now. Try Doc Baker instead.”

The doctor and his wife are two of Smoke's most upstanding citizens. They are vocal in meetings about zoning bylaws and personal hygiene. They give ten percent of their annual earnings to the United Church. Most folks have rarely seen Doc John, regardless of the occasion, dressed in anything less formal than a starched shirt, tie, vest and pressed pants. His white coat. Alice, the daughter of a strict United Church minister, is an ardent believer in the evil of drink. “Not to be confused with other spirits,” she sometimes reminds her Sunday schoolers. Together, the Grays are a formal and tactful couple who never raise their voices in public, rarely disagree in private. They are childless, despite almost twenty-five years of marriage. Doc John is growing slower and feebler than a man his age should (sixty-three according to his birth certificate) and Alice, younger by ten years, worries about his flagging energy.

Buster raises his hand to acknowledge the doctor and cuts across the lawn. He mounts the front steps and hurries to drag a chair over so the old man won't struggle on his behalf. He sits, stretching his legs out before him like two felled logs.

Doc John is wearing a thin blue wool cardigan and a white dress shirt with suspenders. His pants are black with wide hip pockets. His bushy eyebrows rest high and tilt on his forehead like two downy caterpillars unable to crawl away. His hair, in the unforgiving afternoon sun, is also white and a hint of pink scalp peeks through. His face is the colour of sunlessness. He removes his old wire-frame glasses and when he speaks his jowls shake like a rooster's comb.