Provider's Son (15 page)

He went to his own house to call her because he knew how nosy his mother could be and he didn't want to indulge it. When he did call he could tell by the way Anita answered the phone that she knew nothing about the missing boat. He was disappointed. He told her what happened.

“My God,” she said. “All them gone like that? It cant be.”

“And I was supposed to be on her.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. My God.”

“It dont look good.”

“And you was supposed to be on her. What happened?”

“It could have been the extra minutes I took arguing with you on the phone before I left that saved me life,” Levi said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I just missed them.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Something good actually came out of our arguing.”

“Is you happy I whudnt on the boat?”

“Dont be a fool. Of course Im happy. They all could be alive yet though. We dont know.”

“I dont have a good feeling...”

“You never got a good feeling.”

“Is you happy because you still loves me?”

“We got a history, Levi. You dont forget that, no matter what happens. And you is my daughters father.”

“A history.”

“Oh my God I just thought about Mavis. Shell lose her mind if her boys is gone.”

“Wouldnt be the first to lose children.”

“No. But that dont make it any easier to understand.”

“I understands. The world is a cruel fuckin place. Theres no rhyme or reason to any of it. Not long ago I seen a young fella almost get killed at work. With his father watching. Fell off a scaffold.”

“You didnt tell me that.”

“Why would I?”

Anita sighed into the phone.

“I was with a woman last night and she wanted to sleep with me and I couldnt do it,” Levi said.

“Who?”

“You dont know her.”

“Im not surprised. Youre still a handsome man.”

“Thats the first time youve complimented me since…I cant remember.”

“So why didnt you have sex with her?”

“You want to know the truth? I couldnt get it up. Thats why I didnt fuck her. I couldnt get it up.”

“You? Really? My God, you never had that problem before.”

“Well that tells you what you got done to me.”

“
I
got done to you.”

“Yes. You! You got me ruined.”

Anita laughed. “Oh my, here he goes. Go buy some Viagra then.”

“You think this is funny?”

“No. How did we get on this topic anyway? Six people might be dead in our community.”

“You do. You thinks its funny.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“I cares but theyre not family. We still got to live our lives.”

“Im going now. Bye.”

She hung up and Levi slammed the phone down so hard that it cracked the top of the receiver. Why did he tell her what happened? Had he expected pity? Now he was more humiliated than ever.

Levi lit up the third cigarette since he left his mother's, and went to work on his chair in the shed. Every time there was an update on
NLLive
he would turn up the radio so that he didn't miss a word. The Coast Guard helicopter had come back to refuel and was on the way out again. No one had yet been found, but they had not given up hope. There had been no distress call. Of the five men, four of them had cell phones, and none of them had called their families when they said they would. Nor were they answering. Were they really gone? He was having difficulty concentrating on the chair. His hands seemed to be moving on their own, making decisions without consulting his mind. Small errors were gathering up. All he wanted to do was inhale cigarettes.

He stood away from the chair again and tried to piece together the day before, the missed boat, the bar, the stranger he almost had sex with. He wished he had her number because he would probably call her right now. Just for someone to talk to. If he had not written Barnaby off his books he would call him. It was hard work hating someone he loved.

Survivors

Fiona's Fancy
was never found. The funeral for the crew was held at the United Church where all of them had been baptized. Many of the family members at the front sat and stared like zombies, at the empty space where there should have been the caskets.

The church was packed, with more outside. Levi was at the back. As soon as he entered the church, however, he wished he had not attended. He had done it out of respect for a fishing crew who had been willing to take him on, and for the community and the families, but he could see people looking at him and whispering among themselves. After all, his name had been listed as one of the missing when the boat first disappeared. And here he was, walking among them.

Barnaby and their mother were near the middle. Frank, who was not related to any of the deceased, had somehow declared himself head usher. He met Levi at the door and tried to guide him to the right, halfway down. Levi went to the back on the left.

They repeated the Lord's Prayer and he realized that it was the familiarity of the prayer that gave it power in times like this. Every person in the church had been repeating it since childhood, and now they could lean on it for comfort. Since David's death Levi had given up on God, but he had not given up on the church. His mother and father always said that the church was the glue of the community and when it dissolved so would Gadus. He wondered if they were right. There were still people, but was there a community? He took his family regularly on Sundays, until his father died. After that it began to taper off. David's funeral had been the last time he attended, and all he could remember was staring up at the cross in rage.

The lack of a funeral procession to the graveyard made the ancient ritual seem that much more fragmented and bizarre. Would there be headstones put in the graveyard later? Levi cursed the ocean, which felt like cursing another god. He would go back to Alberta, at least for one more turn-around. But what he needed now was a cold beer.

Out of nowhere the sound of the boy hitting the ground rang in his mind so loud that Levi jumped as if it had happened behind him. He chugged his beer and opened another. Death and misery were closing in on him. First had been the divorce. Then the boy falling from the scaffold. And now an ocean grave he had almost stepped into. What would be next? Tingling sensations ran through his shoulders and he burped. He stood up and went to the fridge for food even though he wasn't hungry. He had forgot to pick up groceries. All he could find was a Hungry Man dinner in the freezer.

Enjoy The Spoils

Levi arrived two hours early at the terminal to make sure he got a seat closest to the gate. And even then there were men, his age or older, who had apparently been there at least an hour. Some were even in their seventies, supplementing their old age pensions to save up enough to build a new shed, or to buy that spanking new Yamaha boat engine they had their eye on. Most younger men didn't have the patience to arrive this early.

Levi pulled his cap down and closed his eyes.

Eventually the terminal was full, and eventually they were shuffling towards the door and out to the plane. Levi walked to the end and sat at a window seat. A young woman sat at the aisle seat and said hello. By no coincidence a young man sat in the middle, even though there had still been plenty of aisle and window seats left. He struck up a conversation with her immediately and Levi smiled to himself. He wished he was twenty-five again. But not really.

Even in the window seat the flight was horribly long. To the young man in the middle it was as if Levi didn't exist, and he was glad. The guy had not shut up since he sat down, and he went to the washroom at least a half dozen times since the plane took off. Even the girl, who seemed somewhat interested at first, was bored with him. Her final most obvious hint to her suitor was when she took out her iPod and put in her earphones while he was still talking.

Levi couldn't resist. “No luck?” he asked the young man.

“What?”

“Nothing. What camp you work at?”

“Pine Valley.”

“Oh, youre a nice ways from me out in Wisti.”

“Yeah, I was there before. Shithole. The food out in Pine Valley is way better and...” The kid went on and on and on about why the food was better in Pine Valley, his mouth barely pausing for air. His words rolled out of his mouth at an unnatural pace, as if he couldn't stop himself even if he tried. And the few breaks in talking he did take were accented by him rocking his jaw, as if the hinges under his ear lobes were coming lose.

“What do you do?” the guy said.

“Welder.”

“Im a scaffolder. No ways away from Fort Crack, our camp. I spends a lot a time in there, by, to tell you the truth. I can only handle it so long in camp. Go off your head sure and...” On and on he rambled about Fort McMurray and why it was the dirtiest place in Canada, to the point where Levi found himself staring out the window, drifting off to other thoughts, while the young man's incessant chatter became background noise like the never ending roar of the airplane.

“...have you?” he was asking, and Levi came back to attention. “What?”

“Ever been in town?”

“Only in the airport.”

“On the east side is Crackhead village. Stay the fuck away from there. Fucking big-ass Indians bumming for money when you gets a bit of gas or a pack of smokes. Who's going to say no to a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Indian? Might get your head caved in if you do. Eh by? Hookers everywhere.”

Eventually the length of time between each sentence slowed down and he got up for the washroom again.

“Urine infection,” he mumbled, as he pushed past the girl's legs for the fourth time. The scowl on her face was getting deeper each time he got up, and when he met up with a flight attendant in his way she looked at him and said curtly, you'll have to wait. So instead he went to the washroom on the other side. Levi glanced over at the girl and she shook her head in disgust.

The young man would never be gone for more than two minutes, and when he came back it seemed as if the urination had revived him once again, along with a reoccurring case of the sniffles.

“I had a urine infection once,” Levi said. “Just about drove me off the head. How long you have it?”

“Oh Jesus...a while now.”

“You take any drugs for it?”

The girl next to them snorted laughter and Levi and the young man looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said.

The young man couldn't sit in one position for more than five minutes. His leg vibrated endlessly, and his rolling jaw kept on rolling. Sleep for him seemed impossible. In one of the rare pauses Levi pulled his cap down over his eyes and tried to sleep, but the young man was having none of it. He continued to talk anyway, hardly seeming to even care if anyone was listening.

“I shouldnt have sat in the middle,” the young man eventually said to himself.

Levi gazed down at the land as the plane began its descent. A myriad of crisscrossing roads, pole-lines, and pipelines cut through the forest, extending to the horizon.

“Look at that shit,” said the young man, startling Levi.

“A lot of roads,” Levi said.

“I suppose I should feel sorry, but wer fucked anyway. One of these days this planet is going to shrug us off like a bad cold. Might as well enjoy the spoils while we can.” He sniffed for the one hundredth time, and straightened up in his seat again.

“What about your kids?” the girl next to them said. Her headphones were off.

“Kids? Whod be crazy enough to bring kids into this world? Sure Im that paranoid about having youngsters that I wears condoms in me dreams.”

The tiny Erbacor Energy terminal was full of people in the polar opposite mood of Levi and his fellow travellers. Two people from Gadus were among those departing and he stopped to talk with them.

“Hows the weather back home?”

“Not bad by.”

“Hows your mother getting on?”

“Alright.”

“I cant imagine what that funeral must have been like.”

“No, you cant.”

“How come you didnt end up on the boat anyway?”

“Luck,” Levi said, and that word ended the conversation.

Levi was still on the bus when he passed the project and saw the scaffolds again. A wave of dread swept over him so strong it felt as if someone was sitting on his chest. He tried to distract his thoughts to the precious cargo in his two suitcases, and the likelihood that it got damaged. He saw the way the bag handlers worked, and they weren't exactly gentle, not even compared to commercial airports.

In the lobby of Camp Wisti Sinead was standing in line with her bags. He could see her welling up when she saw him. He brought her out into the porch for a little privacy.

“I really thought you were gone,” she said.

“Im not gone anywhere, my dear. Im right here.”

“Why did you even go back at that anyway? You got a good job here.”

“This racket aint easy, Sinead. Im not a young man anymore.”

“Its better than drowning on some friggin boat isnt it?”

“Welding aint the safest racket in the world.”

“Its safer than a boat.”

“I suppose.”

“Promise me you wont go out at that shit anymore.”

“I promise,” Levi said, having no idea if he would or not.

Levi figured he would stop in the bar and wait for his luggage to arrive. Caprice cracked a cold Canadian for him before he spoke.

“Four-seventy-five.”

“It was four-twenty-five when I left.”

“Now its four-seventy-five.”

“When did it go up?”

“Last week, cheapskate. Do you want the beer or not?”

Levi gave her five dollars.

“I guess that means less tips for you.”

She shrugged as she slapped the quarter on the table. “Not really. A lot of guys give me ten and tell me to keep the change.”