Circus (17 page)

Sally extends her hand to seal the deal, and mother and daughter stand there, shaking each other’s hands as if they are business acquaintances. As Sally packs her backpack with her colouring books and pencil crayons for the car, Karen feels marginally more empowered to handle the small tasks of the day, leaving the larger worry for James.

At George’s insistence, the brothers keep all of their money in cash in a safe hidden under a tarp beneath his bed. Years earlier, Willie had suggested that they entrust their earnings to the bank, but George refused and the subject had never been brought up again. So there the safe remained, containing large stacks of American bills. There was some Canadian
money, too, but most of what was inside was foreign currency, unusable on a day-to-day basis. Neither of the brothers had ever counted the money. They did not imagine that they were rich, nor had they any need to be. But their livelihood did depend on the well-being of that safe, so George was careful to ensure that no one except his brother knew the combination. He had the feel of the lock hardwired into him and sometimes opened it just to make sure that muscle memory wouldn’t let him down in a time of need. For all his education, Willie was not very fiscally knowledgeable, although he was nebulously anxious about money, so George was the one who took care of the finances, such as they were, and opened up the safe and told Willie which bills to take out for groceries and staples.

On grocery day, George told Willie to take out an extra five dollars so they could buy one of Eliza’s apple pies at the farmer’s market. As they prepared for their trip, George suggested disrupting their usual ritual of travelling to the market with Travis Elcock, the buffalo farmer, at six, in order to wait and invite the newcomers along.

“Perhaps the lady wants to join us? Meet folks and see what the place has going for it?” George suggested.

“She has a car of her own,” said Willie.

“It would be improper not to ask.”

“Doesn’t much like the look of us, George.”

“No wonder, if we don’t welcome her to town! I’d not like the looks of us either if we were so rude.”

“Best keep quiet and not bother her.”

“We have to at least introduce ourselves. It’s not right.”

Having agreed to stick to their usual plan on the condition that the welcome be extended later on in the day, the brothers each grab a jug of unpasteurized sheep’s milk to take to the market, where they will hand it over to Jonah, who will turn it into cheese.

The market was never overwhelmingly busy, but it was the most social event of the brothers’ week. There were usually about ten stalls in the parking lot outside the old grain elevator, which had recently become the local art gallery. On Saturdays, the lot was blocked off, the gallery closed, and marquees set up early for the morning’s preparations. As the brothers wandered around the market, Willie admired the desultory loveliness of wooden barrels untidily overflowing with root vegetables, the mason jars full of gleaming homemade jellies, condiments, and preserves, and the drooping sweetness of wildflowers in metal buckets, a quarter a stem or a dollar for a handful. Sensory deprivation was not any more of a bother at the market than in any other situation and the brothers relied on each other to navigate the parking lot. Holding on to Willie’s suspender, George shifted from foot to foot, swaying to the sound of Mr. Jenkins’s harmonica and the dozens of indistinguishable voices that chattered around the stalls. When the occasional greeting leapt forth from the din, George would say hello back, and yes, he and his brother were doin’ just fine thanks, a response often spoken to the horizon rather than to his interlocutor unless Willie pointed his brother in the right direction. Willie received handshakes and nods as they approached the stalls, and observed his brother’s conversations to make sure everyone was comfortable. Both
brothers tasted samples of plastic sticks full of cinnamon-flavoured honey, and breads, cakes, and pastries baked in someone’s homemade backyard brick oven. They sipped hot apple cider from plastic cups.

Willie signalled to George when they reached Eliza’s stall by tugging twice on his brother’s ear, though the smell of wild blueberries and warm pastry already had George tilting his head back with pleasure. Willie waved at Eliza’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Abigail, who greeted him by raising her hand shyly. The brothers’ system of lip-reading for Willie and speaking back out loud for George was one that made sense to the two of them but had not been completely translated to other people (the butcher, for instance, could never get the hang of it, and was forever confusing the brothers and holding paper packages of meat out to George, expecting him to take what he couldn’t see). But Eliza knew to say hello to George as she looked and nodded at Willie.

“We’re having a treat this week, Liza,” George said, making conversation as Willie surveyed the pies.

“Apple?”

“ ’Course. Unless there’s a better offer?”

“Well, I’ve got blueberry too, and strawberry-rhubarb, but you don’t like that one as much, as I remember it.”

“Apple it is, sweetheart, apple it is,” said George, smiling at her left shoulder.

As Eliza boxed up the pie for the brothers, Abigail helped another customer.

“Will these freeze well?” The school principal made a grand gesture to indicate the pies.

“Oh gosh. I don’t know, sir. I got eight brothers so I’ve never seen one last more than an afternoon.”

George and Eliza giggled in spite of themselves at Abigail’s polite bewilderment, while Willie, wanting to know what was going on, nudged George in the ribs.

“Well, do they?” the principal asks again. “Would they be the sort of thing a man could freeze?”

Willie watched as Abigail ran her hands over her long blue skirt as though she was smoothing away her irritation.

“They sure would be,” George jumped in, “and you won’t regret this purchase here, sir. Best pies in town.” He turned to where he thought the principal was standing, but instead faced the centre of the parking lot. Willie took George by the shoulders and, not knowing quite where to point his brother, angled him back towards Abigail. Eliza passed Willie the pie as tenderly as if she were handing over a nest full of new eggs, and he felt their hands touch as he received it.

The principal handed Abigail a bill and pivoted to face George as he waited for his blueberry pie. “Well, how are you there, George? How are those new neighbours of yours working out?”

“We don’t know much yet. They just came in yesterday. Willie saw ’em getting out of their van. We wanted to give them time to settle in before we barged on up there.”

“Right, well, I hear they have two kids? A boy and a girl?” The principal keeps trying. George repeats the question slowly for Willie, who says simply, “Yes.” It was hard for Willie to know if he could be understood by anyone other than George, since he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice, so he frequently kept his answers brief.

“You let us know now if they give you any trouble, won’t you, boys?” The principal spoke to everyone in town as though they were eleven years old.

“There’s no trouble we ain’t seen before, sir. I hope with these new folks we’ll just keep keepin’ on the way things are.” George tugged Willie’s ear again to signal that it was time to go. “You take care now, all of you.”

The brothers ambled onward for the rest of their groceries, Willie holding on tight to the bakery box. For George, the trip to the market was all that was needed to lift the ominous mood that had descended on the property since the new tenants arrived. He fancied himself a bit of a conversationalist, and although they hadn’t had much to say about the neighbours this week, they would surely be able to introduce everyone next Saturday.

In contrast, Willie felt a deepening uneasiness verging on panic throughout their morning at the market and as they rode back home in the truck. His body was reacting to the worry by sweating in places he didn’t even know produced sweat, like the backs of his knees and the crooks of his elbows. Either by virtue of being a good listener, or because he knew his brother well enough to smell distress, George reached across the bench of the pickup and held Willie’s hand all the way home.

The idea comes to Karen while she is washing the dishes. There must be some form of assisted living for retired people that
would suit the shepherds. Surely there must be. Perhaps if she could arrange and even financially support their transition to a nursing home, they would be able to leave the property without too much hassle, and they would be cared for in the right ways. The more she thinks it through, the more it seems totally appropriate, the kind of thing a social worker would recommend if confronted with two frail old men attempting to make a go of it on their own in the wilderness and bothering their neighbours in the process. Standing at the sink by the window, Karen can see them now through the small gap in the curtain, hand in hand, carrying what appear to be bags of groceries back to their shack. She pulls the curtains fully shut to hide the shepherds from the kids. Fortunately, she has managed to convince Sally and Jackson to move on from their one-box police station to making a miniature Alcatraz out of the other cardboard moving boxes. As far as Karen can tell, they are as excited about the cartons as they seem to be about anything else in their new surroundings. Karen picks up the phone to share her plan with James.

“We can just get them taken care of.”

“Sweetie, I think it might be a little extreme to hire a hit man.” The sound of traffic obscures James’s answer slightly.

“A nursing home!”

“Oh, right. Right.” James seems to be eating something.

“Are you listening? I’ve really been thinking about this.”

“Right, yeah. No, a nursing home seems good.”

The audible crunching is making Karen’s skin crawl, so she tells James goodbye and sits down cross-legged on a flattened box. She stares for a while at her cellphone, which still has a
Toronto number and is probably costing her a fortune. Deciding to take matters into her own hands, rather than wait for James, who might have second thoughts, she tells the children to stay where they are and goes outside to investigate the whereabouts of the shepherds. Once she sees that the coast is clear, she calls for the children, bundles them into the van, and drives to town to see if she can find someone to talk to.

When they arrive in town, she pulls up to the gas station. Karen asks the attendant, a slouchy seventeen-year-old boy, where the nursing home is as he fills the tank. The attendant’s Circle K nameplate says “Jessica,” presumably an example of teenage humour. He points her down the road: “Your first right, then the next left, then a right at the lights. It’s at the end of that road opposite the playground.”

At the word
playground
, mayhem erupts in the previously quiet back seat.

“Can we go can we go can we go?” Jackson is first to ask.

“Have you been good?”

“The best,” Sally pipes in with assurance.

“Well, then, you can go. I have something to sort out first, but if you’re very well behaved we can go to the playground afterwards. Deal?”

“Done deal,” says Jackson.