Year of Lesser (2 page)

Charlene laughs. “Well, then you just stay away from Melissa Emery.”

“You still on the pill?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t start that, Johnny. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Sometimes I hate this town,” Charlene says. “This house. I hate walking around on your father’s carpet, eating off those chipped plates, sleeping in your parents’ bedroom. I hate that tree out there. I feel so small, everything’s so dangerous.”

Johnny doesn’t answer. He wants to ignore Charlene, pretend she is someone else. But he doesn’t, she won’t let him tonight. Sometimes he wouldn’t be surprised to come home and find her gone. She could run. She’s that kind of person. He says, “They healed Erwin Heinrichs tonight.”

“Wow.” A mocking, bitter tone.

Johnny ignores her. “I’ll be curious to see him in a few days, find out what the details are.”

“You’re too literal, Johnny.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me, Charlene.”

The next morning, before Charlene is awake, Johnny dresses, puts on a jacket and rubber boots, and goes out into the machine shed. Since last fall he’s wanted to do this but has never felt right about it. He climbs up onto an oily work shelf and lifts down a thick, hard rope that’s tied up in a tight coil with baling wire. He snaps the wire with cutters and smells the rope; this is the one his father used. A pigeon coos and beats a rhythm in the far corner of the empty building. Within the small square of light that falls on Johnny through a dusty top window, he fashions a rudimentary noose in the thick rope. It is not easy and his palms burn. His fingernails break. When he is done he jumps down from his perch and pushes his way out into the morning light and walks, rope in hand, to the back of the house where the tallest elm stands. It’s a good climbing tree and about twelve feet up a thick branch extends parallel to the ground. A good swinging tree. Johnny climbs to that branch and sits there with the noose around his neck. The rest of the rope dangles loose so it would be obvious to any onlooker that he has no real intentions here. He thinks about Charlene sleeping inside the house, about how some day he’ll chop this tree down, it’s just too easy this, about how the land he owns, given to him by his father, stretches for miles all around this farm, but he’s never touched it.

He pats his pockets, looking for a cigarette, then remembers he quit. He thinks he’ll start again, maybe today. He takes the rope off his neck and throws it to the ground. The grass is wet from a night rain and the water bubbles on the oily rope. It’s a harmless piece of string. Not much really, nothing to be afraid of. Johnny climbs down the tree slowly, aware of his age, of the possibility of falling.

He says to Charlene at breakfast, “Terribly easy to kill yourself, really. Easier ways than hanging.”

Charlene’s in her bright red dress and dark blue stockings with red shoes. Johnny likes the outfit and he watches her stand by the stove. She turns her head to look over at the table and Johnny sees her chin is double, especially when she ducks forward. She grimaces and turns away.

“If I were a poet like you,” he says, “I’d write a poem and list the ways. Keep it simple but still make my point. Drowning, gunshot, asphyxiation, gas, overdose, wrists, jumping. That’s the easiest, I guess, jump off a twenty-storey building.”

There’s a pause and then Charlene says, “I’m not a poet.”

“Funny,” Johnny says, “how we become like our parents. Brushing my teeth this morning I saw my dad’s profile in the mirror.” He reaches up and strokes his neck. “He had this flesh that pulled off his cheeks when he was older, and his neck had spots. See, I’m getting spots.”

Charlene comes over to the table, coffee in hand, and stands beside Johnny. She touches his neck, then leaves her hand lying on his shoulder and says, “You scared the shit out of me this morning. If you’re going to be so damned selfish, then do it somewhere else. Not in this yard. Not in this house.”

Johnny’s eyes lift, imagining Charlene watching him from the upstairs window. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just wanted to get his perspective, see things his way.”

“You scared me,” Charlene repeats. She’s moved over to the window. Then she says, “And what did you see?”

“Not much.”

Charlene turns and leans against the edge of the window frame.
Johnny watches her face, looking for the softness that usually comes with forgiveness. It isn’t there. Then she says, “We’re not doing very well. Maybe we’ve never done very well, but lately it’s been worse. Whether you’re here or gone, it’s about the same. I miss you when you’re away and then you come home and I still miss you.”

While Johnny listens he looks at the cloth-covered buttons on Charlene’s dress. They have Xs stitched into their centres. Charlene keeps talking. “Everything’s a joke, isn’t it? This morning, up in the tree? I think about you and I wonder, How many more times is he going to be saved? The girls at the bank? Well, they talk sometimes and they kid around asking if you’re still a Christian. I play along because what else can I do? So, my husband’s a joke. And then you go and climb that tree like a little monkey and I don’t know who you are any more. Oh shit, I’m late.” She plucks Kleenex from a box, dabs at her nose, punches her arms into her spring coat, says “I’m late” once more, and walks out of the house, leaving Johnny at the table, spinning an empty coffee mug in his hands. He listens to Charlene’s Mustang start up and then she’s gone, down the driveway and out onto the mile road turning right, towards town.

Almost a year ago, the day Johnny’s father killed himself, Johnny was with Loraine Wallace. They’d talked meat-meal and feed additives out in the yard, the wind blowing leaves around their feet, and then they’d gone in for coffee and sat at the kitchen table that looked out onto the grass and the machine shed. Johnny hadn’t visited for a while and Loraine was being shy but soon Johnny was talking nonsense from the back of his throat and Loraine was letting him.

“Missed you, Loraine,” he said.

“Not me,” she answered. “The sex.”

“No, no, you. This kitchen here, the way you push through life, your knuckles there.” He took her hands and touched her knuckles, one at a time.

“You know, sometimes, Johnny, I think I should get a different feed salesman. I wait for you and wait for you and you don’t come and I have to phone in my order and then the next moment you’re here and I don’t want to let you go.” Loraine came around the table and held Johnny’s head. She was a small woman. Johnny liked her tiny nose, her little ears, the size of her bum in his hands. Her arms were muscled from heavy work, her tummy flat. When he undressed her and ran his hands around on her body he thought of her as a young boy who happened to grow breasts. She wore an invisible wreath of oats and Palmolive and the faintest scent of ammonia.

When they were finished touching each other all over and Loraine had bitten into his chest, they lay on her bed and she traced his face and said, “I love your mouth. It’s so big. Ugly sometimes. I think of your mouth when you’re not here and I wonder what it’s doing, the food that’s in it, who it’s talking to, who it’s with. Your voice too. When I first heard your voice on the phone, the time you called about that bad mix, I was surprised because your voice was different, as if disguised, and I didn’t recognize you. But then, I just had to think about your lips, your gums, your teeth, your tongue, the way the left side lifts in a kind of happy sneer, and I realized, yeah, that’s him.” She kissed his ear. “I have to go clean out the barns.”

Johnny rolled onto his side. Put a hand on her waist. “Let’s just say, you and me, we were together. Okay? Would you want children?”

She nosed his chin. “Sure, anything.”

“No, really. You’ve got a thirteen-year-old. Would you start again?”

Loraine pulled back, her small blue eyes skipping over Johnny’s body, then resting on his face. “What are you saying, you’d leave Charlene?”

“I’m not saying that, I’m just wondering what you think.”

“Don’t play with my head.” She pushed him away and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a T-shirt, socks, panties, jeans. Her hair bounced as she moved. Johnny watched her shoulder blades, her ribs shine through her back.

He asked, “Do you eat?”

“Yeah, eggs.” She left him there to get dressed on his own.

When he walked out into the yard she came out of the barn and met him by his half-ton. Johnny watched her come, her black boots up to her knees, her thin face flattened by the light, and he wondered why he kept hurting people, what there was about him that made him want to see people in pain. Sometimes it worked to will a good feeling, a love for someone, and he tried that now. He lit a cigarette, put an arm around Loraine and squeezed.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Me too.”

“You’ll come again soon. Okay? It gets lonely out here by myself.”

“Sure, soon.”

“And you know, Johnny?” Loraine pushed in and gripped one of his legs between hers; hot on his thigh. “I could have a baby, really.” Her eyes were watery from the wind. She tried to kiss him again. He let her and then put his chin on her head and watched the swallows spin over her barn. He didn’t say anything, he just let her hold him.

“Go now,” she said finally, pushing him towards his truck.

After leaving Loraine’s, Johnny drove a mile south and turned into his father’s farmyard. Johnny’s mother had died a year earlier and his father lived alone. Turning off the engine he sensed immediately something was wrong. Jack wasn’t barking and that was unusual. He watched the house, the barn, the shed, and the yard, looking for movement. He climbed out of the car, leaned on the door and listened. The wind was knocking leaves off the trees. The shed door was off its latch and banging. He found the black Lab dead alongside the west side of the house. Its head was crushed as if it had been hit with a heavy pipe. Nearby he found a baseball bat with Jack’s hair on it. Blood too.

He found his father hanging from the branch on the big elm, the branch that stretched out parallel to the ground, twelve feet up. His
father was in socks, his shoes lay on the ground below him; Johnny imagined they fell off in the act of death. He didn’t look at his father’s face. He went into the house and phoned Ike at OK Feeds and then he sat down in the rocker in the middle of the big room and waited. He heard Ike come in and talk to him and ask him if he was okay. Then Ike made some phone calls and took Johnny into town and Charlene was located. Johnny learned later that a grain truck was used to cut his father down. They drove the truck right under his feet and someone, Leonard Ostnick, he thinks, stood on the cab and cut him down.

He knows when he’s backsliding. It’s happened so many times before he sees the signals before they’re there. Except this time he doesn’t care as much. The sense of failure isn’t quite as acute. After Charlene’s Mustang has left that morning, Johnny calls OK Feeds and says he’s sick. Then he sits at the kitchen table and pours himself Five Star, one glass after another, and he watches the clock on the wall. He falls asleep, head on the table, and wakes late in the afternoon, his temples aching, his hands light. He shaves sloppily and then leaves the house and drives to his sister Carol’s place in town.

Carol has a three-year-old girl and she’s also eight months pregnant. She stands, her ankles thick, and tells Johnny that he can stay for supper. Her voice is defensive, impatient. Johnny considers saying,
I’m clean,
but he decides against it, knowing he must smell of alcohol. He finds Erica in the living room and he lies on the rug beside her and pretends to bite her leg. “Alligator,” he growls. Erica squeals and jumps away. She runs back at Johnny and lands on his head. She’s wearing shorts and her bare legs are soft and cool. Johnny likes the feel of them on his neck and face. He tickles her till she calls out, panicky and breathless. Carol comes into the living room and suggests they read a book. “I hate to see her get all wound up just before supper. Roy does the same thing.”

So Johnny reads a book to Erica and from where he sits he catches
glimpses of Carol in the kitchen, straining spaghetti, opening a tin of corn, and he thinks how she’s changed. She used to like him, a lot, but lately she’s more aloof, as if she doesn’t trust him any more. He leaves his niece with a lift-the-flap book, goes into the kitchen and leans on the counter. Carol’s face is flushed and the windows along the far wall are steamed up. She lifts down three plates from the cabinet and as her arms go up so does her top and Johnny sees perfectly how her stomach looks. Her belly button has popped out into a tiny elephant’s trunk. There are narrow red pencil marks creasing her belly. Her top is thin and Johnny can see that her breasts and nipples are bigger. She’s wearing big sweatpants, her hips are wide.

“Roy’s going to be late, he’s got a meeting.”

Johnny gestures at her stomach. “You gonna have more?”

Carol stops, supports her stomach with her hands and says, “This is not a good time to ask. I remember with Erica, right after she was born I wanted six more like her. But now, I just want to get rid of this bundle.” She dips a spoon into the sauce and lifts it to her mouth. She looks at Johnny and says, “How long you here for?”

Johnny shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. A few nights? I won’t bother you, sleep in the basement, eat at Chuck’s. It’s just Charlene and me, we need a break.”

“You’re going to lose her.” Carol says this softly, as if talking about the spaghetti in the colander, but her meaning is there.

He sleeps on the floor in the basement, wrapped in a thin sleeping bag. Before turning out the light he hears Carol on the phone with Charlene. First they’re discussing him and then they’re not, and Johnny falls asleep wondering how long it’ll take before Charlene misses him or he misses her. He thinks about her walking around alone in the big house, touching walls and light switches with her thick fingers, locking the doors, wishing for the dog Johnny doesn’t want, and then climbing the stairs to crawl into the bed, keeping to her side, her hair spread black across the white pillow.

He calls in sick again Friday morning, has breakfast at Chuck’s, then
goes home for clean clothes. Charlene has left for work. The bed is unmade, dishes lie unrinsed in the sink, a couple of books are spread and lie cover up on the rug beside the bed. There is a sense of haste or anger in the way the house is topsy-turvy. Johnny guesses that Charlene is upset and he’s glad for this. He hates indifference. He listens to an oldie-goldie station while he bathes and dresses. He thinks about Loraine and how when she touches him it’s like the Holy Spirit tickling his spine. He packs an overnight bag and in the early afternoon he drives to her farm and finds her counting eggs in the barn. She’s wearing coveralls and an Expos cap.