A Boy of Good Breeding (5 page)

Often, after Dory had removed the easier sheets of wallpaper and moved on to the next room, Knute would stay behind
and finish off the tougher bits, steaming and soaking and, finally, scraping them off. Dory would yell to her from the next room, “Hey, Knutie, do you remember Mr. Pagliotti?” And Knute would say, “Uh, yeah …” just knowing something awful had happened to him because Dory seemed to be in a morbid mood these days and was constantly telling Knute about somebody or other who had died or been diagnosed with terminal cancer or had a leg amputated or lost her baby.

“His grandson found him dead in his car,” she’d holler from the other room, from up on her ladder or stretched out on the floor with a hammer.

“Hmmm …” Knute would say bracing herself.

“Yeah, he and his grandson were taking a look at the field and apparently he had told his grandson that he was a bit tired and he was going to go and have a little nap in the car.”

“Oh oh,” Knute would say. She knew what was coming.

“The grandson came back to the car, found Mr. Pagliotti, well, you know, his grandpa, and then ran back to the house telling everyone Grandpa won’t get up. He’s sleeping and he won’t get up.”

“Yikes,” was about all that Knute could muster. And she could imagine Dory in the other room sucking in her breath or shaking her head. Knute thought, maybe, that Dory was trying to prepare herself for Tom’s death, for a sudden departure on his part. Or maybe she was trying to make herself feel better. After all, Tom was still alive. Or maybe she could only relate this type of gloomy information when Tom was safely tucked away in the garage. All Knute knew was that the telling of these morbid anecdotes was somehow related to the home renovations. And as soon as she’d positioned herself on the stepladder, holding a steaming kettle in one hand and a scraper in the other, she could expect Dory’s “Hey, Knutie, do you remember so-and-so, something terrible’s happened” stories to come floating over from the other rooms.

So, Knute was working. But then again she wasn’t making any money. Not that she had a lot of expenses. No rent, no food, no utilities. Tom and Dory would never have thought to charge their own daughter room and board. But at her age, she figured, a little contribution to the general management of affairs might be in order.

She wondered just what Hosea Funk would pay her to do. It couldn’t be that complicated being the mayor of a town with fifteen hundred people. Besides, nothing ever really changed in Algren. About the only thing she remembered Dory telling her was that Johnny Dranger’s farm kept being rezoned. One week it would be in the town limits of Algren, the next it was, well, sort of in limbo. Somewhere in the municipality of Libreville, but not actually in any town. Which makes sense, Knute thought. What’s a farm doing in a town? Last time she checked farms were in the country, not next to a
7
Eleven or a credit union. But she didn’t think it was Hosea doing the rezoning anyway because mayors didn’t have that privilege. It was a provincial government thing. She thought.

So after Johnny Dranger’s being in and then out and then in again, the only other change in Algren was the new indoor arena and curling rink. Hosea had battled long and hard to get that built. None of the older people in Algren thought it was a good idea. They had always played hockey outdoors—why shouldn’t their grandchildren? They would have liked to have seen the money spent on another doctor, an English one preferably, though nobody would have said it, or maybe new blacktop on some of the roads. In Algren the oldies lived for new blacktop. But, in the end, Hosea had managed to convince them. He promised that during the summer he would air-condition the indoor arena and curling rink and hold auctions and quilting bees and bake sales and have inspirational speakers and car shows and you name it, he’d get it. So that, in the
summer, the seniors of Algren would have a sort of retirement club of their own.

Hosea had also managed to convince the townspeople to name it The Euphemia Funk Memorial Arena, Curling Club, and Recreational Complex. Of course, nobody called it that, they called it the rink, but it had raised a few eyebrows at the time. Mrs. Funk, as the kids of Algren knew her even though she wasn’t married, had this aura of mystery about her. They all found out, at a certain age, that she wasn’t really Hosea’s mom, and different stories about how she got Hosea were always circulating. According to Tom and Dory, the truth was somebody, a man on a horse, had just come along and given him to her, barely a day old. Nobody knew who the man was or where Hosea came from, but Euphemia, from that day on, was Hosea’s unofficial mother. So anyway, it wasn’t like Mrs. Funk, Euphemia, had done anything wrong, it was just considered, by many people in Algren, a bit weird and maybe not entirely healthy for a single unmarried woman to suddenly become a boy’s mother. And many people would have preferred Hosea and the arena committee to come up with a different name for the complex, a name that wouldn’t have them shifting in their chairs, staring at the ceiling, or changing the subject every time one of their kids asked them who Euphemia Funk was.

But that’s what it was called and that was the big news in Algren.

“There it is,” thought Hosea. The scribbler was always there, in fact, in the top drawer of his desk, but Hosea would always repeat these words to himself, not so much as an obvious affirmation of what was there but as a sort of mantra, preparing him for his work, a simple prelude to the more complicated nature of his obsession. The scribbler was an orange Hilroy, the kind
still available on dusty drugstore shelves in places like Algren. On the front of it, at the bottom, were spaces to fill in personal information. Hosea had filled in each space. Name: Mayor Funk. Subject:
1500
. Classroom No.: Mayor’s office, town of Algren, Canada’s Smallest!

Hosea preferred to take out his scribbler when no one was around. Usually that wasn’t a problem as there were only two very part-time employees working in the place. The old renovated house was a municipal government project. It contained the Mayor’s Office, the Arts Council Office for Algren and the surrounding areas, the Recreation District Office, the Weed Control District, and the Cemetery Board. Two women, sisters, in fact, shuffled around between the various responsibilities. Hosea’s Aunt Minty, Euphemia’s younger sister, used to work in the office, but years ago she and her husband, Bert Seeger, had moved to Fresno, California, and Hosea didn’t hear much from her anymore. She and Bert had come out for Euphemia’s funeral, but most of their time had been taken up with the Seeger in-laws.

Hosea had enjoyed working with his Aunt Minty. Every time he came into work she’d have the coffee made and sometimes fresh pastry, and she’d smile and say to Hosea, “Good morning, sweetie, you’re looking well.” From time to time Hosea murmured those words to himself under his breath as he stomped the snow from his boots or took off his coat, hoping the sisters working behind the counter wouldn’t hear him and look at each other in that way.

But now he was alone. And that was just fine because he needed to make a pertinent entry in his scribbler. Under the Dying and Potentially Dead column, he carefully printed the name Leander Hamm. Then he turned to the very back of the scribbler and, under the Newly Born and Rumoured to be Born he printed the name Veronica Epp and the notation, “expecting
triplets,” and then he added—“high risk.” Drumming his pen against his desk for a moment, he returned the scribbler to its place in the drawer.

He glanced out his window and saw the dog. The same dog he had seen on his way to work after visiting Veronica Epp. A woman had been crouching down and holding the dog by its collar and had asked Hosea if he knew whose dog it was. Hosea had been concerned that the dog was not on a leash but running freely, unsupervised, all over Algren. He asked the woman if she would call the pound, or actually Phil Whryahha, the man in Algren who, proudly appointed by Hosea himself, was responsible for stray pets. And that’s when John Funk (no relation to Hosea), the caretaker of St. Bartholomew’s Church, had walked up and suggested to the woman that she simply let the dog go. That the dog would surely find its way home. There was hardly a car on Algren’s streets that would run the risk of hitting it, he’d said, and the dog seemed friendly enough. Let it go, he’d said. It’ll be fine.

Hosea had stood there, dumbfounded. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Such a simple and obvious solution. The woman let go of the collar, the caretaker strolled back to St. Bart’s, and the dog slowly walked away, towards the edge of town. Hosea stood there. He had said something. Something like “very good.” Or “there you go.” But he had felt unsure of himself. This dog business had jarred him.

He focussed on his plan to bring the Prime Minister to Algren. It could be a good thing for everybody in Algren, he thought. It would be an exciting day, a coup for a small prairie town, a psychological boost, and a surefire guarantee that Hosea would be re-elected, when the time came, as Algren’s mayor.

Hosea whipped open the second drawer from the top of his desk and pulled out the letter from the House of Commons, dated February
12
,
1996
. “Dear Mayor,” it began. Hosea had
read and reread, folded and unfolded this letter so often that it had become slightly torn down the middle. He had carefully fixed it with a piece of Scotch tape so the tear was hardly noticeable. Hosea moved his finger across the photocopied signature, John Baert, Prime Minister. The contents of the letter were by now so familiar to him that he could sit back in his chair, close his eyes, and recite it from memory:

Hosea sat at his desk and imagined the day the Prime Minister would come to Algren. Hosea would be there to greet him, with Lorna at his side. He’d have bought a new suit in Winnipeg, Lorna a new dress and maybe new shoes. The sun would be shining, the high school band would play some rousing march, little Tilly Bond, the cutest kid in town, would present the Prime Minister with a bouquet of flowers. The billboard announcing Algren to the world would be repainted and so would some of the storefronts along Main Street. He and the Prime Minister would shake hands warmly and the Prime Minister would pat him on the back and congratulate him, would take him into his confidence, and they would exchange jokes and leadership tips and anecdotes and discuss crisis management and possibly even correspond after the visit. At dinner, prepared by the Elks or the Kinettes and served in the
Euphemia Funk Memorial Arena, Curling Club, and Recreational Complex, Hosea and the Prime Minister would raise their glasses for the photographers and toast to hmmm, whatever, rural prosperity, perhaps. There would be stories written in the papers and pictures taken, bearing eternal witness to the event and to Hosea’s and Algren’s victory, to their reigning status as Canada’s smallest town.

It would be a day like no other. Hosea now sat way back in his chair, his legs up on his desk, his hands clasped behind his head, his thumbs making circles on the nape of his neck. So lost in thought was he that he didn’t notice his pen roll off his desk and onto the shiny hardwood floor. Even Hosea’s sexual fantasies couldn’t hold a candle to his fantasy of meeting the Prime Minister and having Algren shown off to the world. Yes, it would be a day like no other, that’s for sure, thought Hosea and leaned back even farther so that his swivel chair almost fell over backwards and he had to lurch forward and grip the hard wooden edge of his desk to keep his balance. He must have slammed the palm of his right hand hard against the wood, because that pain triggered a flood of memories and now Hosea pictured another day that was full of pomp and circumstance and nervousness and … what? What was it about that day, anyway? Hosea wondered.

He had been outside playing in the small yard behind the house on First Street. He hadn’t had a jacket on, or was it shoes he hadn’t had on? Had it been March or July? Well, he had picked flowers later that day, so it must have been July. But hadn’t he just come home from school? Yes, of course, he had walked home with Tom who had lived across the street. Well, actually they had run home because two older fellows were chasing them and one of them had taken Hosea’s jacket. That was it. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, because the older boy had taken it, and it must have been a day in May or June. Sometime
when flowers could grow in Manitoba. Roses. He was sure they were roses because they had pricked the palm of his hand when he held them.

“Run, Hosea! Run!” Tom had already been caught as usual and managed to yell out the simple instructions to Hosea before a big hand was clamped over his mouth and he was taken away for his session. These sessions consisted of various activities. Tom and Hosea, for one year in particular, were the whipping boys for a group of older kids from school. Sometimes they were forced to crouch on their hands and knees right below Evangeline Goosen’s bedroom window and the older boys would stand on their backs and watch Evangeline change from her school clothes to her play clothes.

Anyway, on this day they had managed to get his jacket but not him. Hosea didn’t want to go inside his house, he remembered, because Euphemia might get mad at him for losing his jacket. He would never have told her what had really happened. Even now, at age fifty-two, Hosea shuddered to think of his mother marching over to the home of one of the big boys and telling his parents what he had done and demanding that her son’s jacket be returned immediately. But Euphemia wouldn’t have been angry, really, thought Hosea. She would have shrugged and said something like, “Well, easy come, easy go.” And then she would have gone to the hall closet and pulled out one of her old curling sweaters and rolled up the sleeves and made Hosea try it on for size. “There you go, pumpkin, a new jacket.”