Road to Thunder Hill (13 page)

12. I Seen

I
WONDER IF IT'S
normal, the way men hold back on those things you can't stand about them until they've got you saddled with kids. It sure seemed that way to me because it wasn't that long after the farm dissolved and things had settled down that Ray started the tongue flicking thing again. He had played the wrong card in 45s, which cost his partner points, and his partner, being Alana, had chewed him out like he was eight years old. He leaned towards her and flicked his tongue, which got everybody laughing, with Alana saying that she'd forgotten all about that tongue thing he did. Would he do it again? She was drunk enough to say, “Would you do it to me where it counts?”

The next morning, I asked him what the hell he'd been trying to prove the night before. At first he acted as though he didn't know what I was talking about, and then he slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead and said, “Oh, you mean the tongue thing that you hate so much. I totally forgot that that's one of the things on the list that I'm not allowed to do.”

“I thought I should tell you so you won't start making a fool of yourself again.”

Ray came over to where I was sitting in the rocking chair with Gayl. She was busy sniffling on my shoulder because she had a bad cold and had woken up three times in the night. And since the card game had ended so late, none of us had had much sleep. Which is a great way to begin a fight.

“You mean this tongue thing?” he said.

“Fuck off.”

“No,” he said, taking my chin in his hand and forcing me to look. “It's time you took a good look at the look, cause this is who I am.”

Not six inches from my face stood this asshole, doing the only thing I'd ever asked him not to do.

I hit him in the nose.

I didn't mean to make his nose bleed, but I learned that no matter how lightly it's delivered, a tap on the nose can hurt pretty bad, at least judging by how he reeled around the kitchen holding both hands up to his face. Gayl started to cry.

“Jesus, Trish.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, reaching for a box of cookies and giving one to Gayl. “I'm sorry, okay?”

“There's stuff about you that I don't like either,” he muttered into his hands. “But I keep it to myself.”

“What stuff?”

“Never mind. I try to avoid hurting people's feelings. Especially people who I love.”

“What things, Ray? I'd like to know.” I put Gayl down and then hauled myself up from the chair. I hadn't lost as much weight as I'd wanted after Gayl was born, and I still had to wear these special stockings because of all the wonderful varicose veins I had picked up during my pregnancy.

“Never mind, it was nothing. You were perfect in my eyes.”

“And now I'm not perfect. So spell it out.”

He seemed to think for a minute before he finally said, “Naw. I got used to your little habits.”

He was trying to lighten everything up.

“Tell me! Quit playing with my head.”

“Trish, oh shit, I'm sorry.” He tried to put his arms around me and Gayl, who was still pretty upset from the shouting, and here I was crying about everything in life, and suddenly Ray began to cry too, which had the effect of making my tears dry up quicker than a shut kitchen tap. Then I bundled Gayl up and drove into town.

If my parents thought it odd, me showing up at their door at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning, they didn't show it. In fact, my mother popped Gayl into the stroller they kept for her visits and my father said I looked like I could use a nap, and that it was a perfect day for them to show Gayl off to the world.

Ray called me at my parent's house later that day. I told him I'd only come home if he told me what the big ugly secret was. He promised, and after we got home and got Gayl off to bed, and we got ourselves hunkered down on the couch in front of our favourite cop show, I realized I was scared to learn what it was. What if it was something I couldn't change, or worse, something I wouldn't want to?

As soon as the show was over I said, “Okay, Ray, spit it out.”

“Come on, Trish, it feels so nice and cozy to be here with you. Can't we just relax instead of getting all intense?”

“Nope,” I said as I turned off the TV. I sat on the arm of the couch and stared at him. “You tell me now.”

Ray looked down at his hands. “Okay.” He spread out his fingers and examined them carefully. “You do this thing that used to really bother me, and … we both do really annoying things, and we shouldn't make such a big deal of them. They're what makes us who we are, right?”

“Ray,” I said, with what probably looked like murder in my eyes. “What is it?”

“Why do I feel like I'm suddenly about to shoot myself in the head?” He sighed. “You know, you were a lot braver than I was when you clued me in about the tongue thing. Maybe it stung like hell, but now I realize why I was having trouble attracting girls. I mean, look at how they flock to me now!” He actually had the nerve to laugh, hoping, I guess, for a glimmer of amusement on my part. “And … and,” he continued, his eyes wildly searching the room. “Before we go any further, I just want to say that I wish I hadn't been such a coward about telling you this before. You were right to tell me about the tongue thing. You know, I think you're really smart, Trish.”

Now he had me really scared. I'm smart enough to know that I'm no genius, but I've always felt just as smart as Ray. So where the hell was he going with this?

“Trish,” Ray said, in the patient voice he uses with Gayl, “when you're talking, you have a habit of saying … ‘I seen' instead of ‘I saw'.”

I'm sure I gawked at him for a full minute before shaking my head. “I do not.”

“Yes you do, Trish. Last night when you were telling Bear about the eagle you saw circling over his cabin, you said, ‘I seen an eagle over your place yesterday'.” He quickly added, “It's not like you say other things wrong. You never say, ‘I done it' or ‘they was'.”

I cleared my throat. “People say ‘I seen' all the time.”

“It's a common mistake.”

“Well, excuse me for being so ignorant.” I folded my arms across my chest and turned away from him.

“You see,” he said, as if I hadn't spoken. “You have to put in the ‘ve' after ‘I' when you're talking about something you've seen more than once. Like, ‘I've seen eagles up on Thunder Hill many times.' But when you're talking about what you saw only once in the past, then it's, ‘I saw an eagle yesterday'.”

“But I
have
seen more than one eagle in the past!”

“See? That's it exactly! Now shorten the ‘have' to ‘'ve' and you've got it. ‘I've seen more than one eagle in the past.' Now say it!”

“But I was talking about the one I seen yesterday!” I cried.

“The one you saw yesterday.”

“Did you ever stop to think you might be wrong about this?”

Ray shook his head. “I'm positive about this. Your father says ‘I seen' too. That's likely who you picked it up from.”

“And my mother?”

“No. She says it right.”

“My mother would have told me if I was saying something wrong.”

“She probably didn't notice it. I don't even notice it half the time, I'm so used to it.”

“But you noticed me using it last night.”

“Yes. Like you noticed the tongue thing.”

“That's because you haven't done that in so long.”

“You see, that's where you're wrong, Trish. I never stopped doing it. You just stopped being bothered by it.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the east wind whistling through the house. I thought about my father and how he had made his fortune in blueberries. How he knew every politician in the province and even a lobbyist in Ottawa too, and how he had landed a major exporting contract with Germany only the year before. The fact that he used “seen” instead of “saw” hadn't hurt him any. I wondered what he would say if someone ever pointed out the big mistake that he'd made all his life, the big mistake that he had passed onto his daughter. He'd likely say, “All part of my charm.” My father was that sure of himself.

Then I remembered that receptionist job at the advertising agency in Toronto. And how, after only two days, my father's friend approached my desk to tell me that his former receptionist decided to return to work. Not for one second did I consider that my father's friend might have been lying just to get rid of me. But now, after hearing about my great grammatical sin, I wondered if it had been ‘I seen' that had really put me out of that job. I looked at Ray sitting there on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees and his hands drooping between his knees and suddenly I hated him. Not for telling me about “I seen,” but more because he hadn't told me about it sooner.

I forgave him, though, that very night. He was a very grateful boy, I could tell, just by how skillfully he used the same tongue that got him into so much trouble. But that's not why I forgave him. It had to do with the fact that it dawned on me that he was the only person to ever tell me about “I seen.” Since then I've said it right. But now I have to stop myself from correcting anyone who says, “I seen.”

13. Pool Table Bed

N
OW BEAR IS SHOWING
me some simple card tricks. They are easy to see through and I tell him so. He looks quite hurt, so I ask him to show me another. I also tell him he is sweet to try and entertain me.

“Entertain you? I'm just trying to keep myself awake. And warm. It's freezing in here.”

“Maybe
you
should go sleep in Perry's kitchen,” I suggest, just as my teeth start clacking and a great big shiver almost knocks me off my chair.

Bear laughs. “That wasn't just someone stepping on your grave, it was more like they fell right in on top of you.”

“That's a fun thing to think about,” I say between chatters.

“Look at you,” Bear says. “We have to figure out a way to get warm.”

We look around the room. Other than the couch that Clayton occupies, there are only a few chairs, the cement floor, and the pool table. We look at each other, and then back at the pool table.

He smiles.

“You're joking.”

“We'll be off the floor, at least.” He pulls off his sheepskin vest, rolls it up and hands it to me.

“Your pillow, Madam?”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly,” I say, before grabbing it. “What'll you use?”

He tiptoes over to the couch where Clayton is snoring, and slowly slides a cushion out from under his head. He holds his finger up to his lips when I begin to snicker. Then he takes a stack of old newspapers and carefully spreads them over Clayton.

“Very thoughtful of you,” I whisper when he returns.

He whispers back, “I thought so too. Besides, we wouldn't want him crawling into bed with us during the night.”

“Bed?”

“That's right. Here's your side.” He takes my “pillow” and sets it down on the table. Then he places the stolen cushion next to mine. “And this, is my side. So see that you stay on your own side.”

“That goes for you too.”

Bear spreads open a crumpled piece of tinfoil onto the pool table's bumper. “I've been saving this for special occasions. Like a nightcap.”

We smoke. I never could resist a toke of hash, let alone that of the finest quality. This will surely take the edge off the nasty headache that's creeping up on me. Sure it will, I repeat to myself, deciding to forget that it will lead to an even worse hangover. For now, at least, the sharp edges of the headache are growing fuzzy. And that candlelight gives off such a warm glow to Hog Holler. That pool table looks pretty welcoming, so here I go, crawling over the side. It's so nice to be off that cement floor. I think I'll curl up on my side.

Bear has just now draped his parka over me. It smells like him and feels heavy and soft at the same time.

“What'll you use for a blanket?” I mumble, because he has crawled onto the pool table beside me.

“We'll share,” he says, slipping his arm over mine and snuggling up to my back. “Ah, finally, after all these years, here's my big chance to sleep with Trish Kyle.”

“Whoa!” I say, struggling to sit up on the table.

“Just kidding,” he laughs, and eases me back down to the felt. “We're freezing, right?”

He hugs me once and then all is quiet until we hear Suzie whining as she circles around the table. I catch glimpses of her nose reaching up and over the edge.

“Poor Suzie,” I say. “Even a year ago she could have jumped right up here with us.”

Bear sighs and pulls away, swinging his legs over the side of the table. “Come on Suzie girl, we'll keep you warm too.”

He picks up all fifty pounds of Suzie and plunks her down beside me and she settles in, her tail tickling my face, her long snout resting across my leg. It's getting pretty crowded here on the table, but with her on one side and Bear on the other, I'm finally feeling warm.

Outside Hog Holler, the ice still pelts at the windows but now it sounds gentle and soothing. Behind me, Bear's breathing has slowed down. I try to match my own breathing to his, something I always used to do when Ray was sleeping and I wasn't able to.

“Can't sleep?” Bear whispers.

“Not yet.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

Bear says, “You want to know what I'm thinking? About how funny it is that the two of us are lying here on a pool table, but how it feels like we've been doing this forever.”

“We have in a way. Remember that day in the tree house when we … we went to sleep?”

He gives me a hug in response, and for a second I think I might actually fall asleep.

But then Bear starts rubbing my shoulder and I jar myself awake. What the hell is going on here? This is Bear James spooning with you tonight. Not almost twenty years ago, but now. This is Ray's best friend. Hell, this is one of your best friends! Okay, calm down, it's not like he's humping you or anything. Bear is lying so close because tonight is an emergency, and emergencies call for drastic measures. And obviously, this snowstorm is a big emergency, because isn't that why Ray didn't make it home to you this weekend? Or the last three weekends either for that matter?

Into the darkness I whisper to Bear, “You know what I hate?”

Bear stops rubbing my shoulder like he's seriously considering the question. He clears his throat and whispers back, “I'd rather hear about what you love.”

I am suddenly filled with so much desire it makes me want to cry. Desire also makes me want to squirm, but I resist that too.

He says, “You're not going to tell me?”

“What I love? It's warmth. That's what I was thinking. I want to feel warm.”

He holds me even closer and in a flash I feel an ache surge up the core of my body. So I press back at him, but ever so slightly, as if I'm not even aware. And then I wait. Twenty years of sleeping beside a man has taught me that it doesn't take much encouragement. I'm still waiting … and waiting. I press against him with more encouragement. Where the hell is it? There would be no missing it on a man like Bear. Back at our high school dances he used to press up against us girls so hard that we'd laugh later about getting zipper imprints up to our bellies. Yeah, I know, there's a big difference between a teenaged boy and a middle-aged man, but we're talking about Bear who continues to stroke my arm like it's something precious.

I have to know. Now. So I twist around in his arms until our noses are touching. His face feels cool and soft against my own. I kiss his mouth and run my tongue between his teeth and when he kisses me back I am greatly relieved. So this is not some big brother thing. Bear still wants me as badly as I want him. I press against him harder, already thinking about how wide my legs will have to part, how he'll probe and tug, how we'll have to work at it until … I am already wet knowing it's about to begin. And there escapes another low moan. I press against him, again. It's hard evidence I am after, but for some strange reason it's not there. Suddenly I'm aware of how pathetic this is, and how desperate, and wrong, but still some nagging force tells me to keep working at it anyway, until … without warning he pulls his body away from mine.

“Trish?” he says, his voice sounding lusty and low.

“Oh, hi, Bear,” I say, wishing my face wasn't pressed so firmly against his.

“I don't think…”

I cut him off before he finishes the sentence. “Hey, don't mind me, okay? I just felt like kissing someone tonight, and you were here, right?”

“I'm glad you kissed me,” he says, murmuring into my hair.

“Me too. Sometimes you just have to kiss somebody, right?”

“I'm a great believer in kisses,” he whispers. “Good night, Trish.”