Smoke (18 page)

Ivan moved to the corner of the root cellar where he kicked over a copy of his latest girlie magazine. The brunette on the cover was topless, her full, round breasts and dark nipples partially obscured by a soft lens. “She's all yours if you win.”

Buster forced his throat open and tilted the bottle higher. He remembers gagging again and sputtering and finally wiping his mouth on his bare arm.

“You did it!” said Donny, examining the bottle closely. “Holy smokes; you outdrank Ivan by almost two inches.”

“Hold your horses.” Ivan kicked the magazine out of reach. “Let's see if he keeps it down.”

Buster had done worse to defeat Ivan. Swallowed live minnows, stood barefoot in the snow until he couldn't feel the ground or his toes. But defeat, he was about to learn, is its own cruel master. The whiskey churned and threatened to rise and sure enough, before he knew what had hit him he was dropping forward on his knees, grabbing his gut and hurling the digested remnants of his dinner and the whiskey all over the root cellar floor.

“So what do you say,” Donny asks, interrupting the memory. “You coming or not?”

Buster rubs his hands together. He considers his options: he could stay home with his parents and Lizzie on New Year's Eve and feel sorry for himself or he could endure the party and feel sorry for himself, but at least that way Ivan would have to eat his words.

“Okay wise guy,” he says. “I'll see you there.” He slides across the ice and waves to the boys over his shoulder. He waits to drag his brother away from Susan who is all over Hank—laughing, complimenting him on his athletic ability, grabbing on to his arm for support. It takes a few moments to convince Hank that it's time to leave, though once he does they hurry home together and Buster feels a strange unrelenting flutter in his chest. The flutter of a fragile new opening, even hope setting in. He is to be reckoned with. With the fedora sitting on his head and a fine weapon tucked away he is unstoppable again. Free for the moment, at least. What would a Purple do next?

The McFiddies pile into Tom's truck in their best clothes and head over to the Grays' as they do every Christmas Day. Isabel and Lizzie sit in the cab with Tom while Buster and Hank sit behind in the open box, their chins tucked into their scarves for warmth. Buster is wearing a new shirt, his good pants, his winter coat and of course the white fedora. He stuck a red bow from one of his gifts on the side like a paper boutonniere. He intends to give the bow to Jelly Bean and is holding it, and his hat, on with one hand.

“Susan was pretty friendly yesterday,” he says.

Hank aims his face into the cold, dry air. “Yeah.”

“Are you gonna take her out again?”

“I dunno.” He looks at Buster. “What's it to you, anyway? And what's with that goofy hat?” Now Buster grips the side of the truck for balance as his father turns a corner.

“It's not goofy.”

“Whatever you say … I can't believe we're stuck hanging with old sawbones today.”

“Don't talk about Doc John like that. Besides, you got something more important to do?”

“As a matter of fact.”

Tom pulls into the driveway and parks behind Doc John's Oldsmobile. Isabel bundles Lizzie into her blanket. “I hope those boys behave themselves,” she says. “And promise me
you
won't get carried away. You know how Alice is.” Tom rolls his eyes. Despite his distant Quaker blood, a taste for the occasional beer courses through his veins like a diluting tonic. He cranks the door handle, is out of the truck first.

Buster jumps out of the back and carries a bag of baby paraphernalia into the house without waiting to be asked. Hank carts in the remaining gifts and a box of their mother's baking while Isabel stands on the veranda with Lizzie asleep in her arms. The house looks and sounds too quiet, she thinks. Not alive. Something is definitely wrong though she can't put her finger on it. There are no candy-coloured lights strung up along the awnings this year, and five wilted poinsettia plants line the wrap-around porch. The flicker of a television set is coming through the window like a dying ember. Isabel shivers. She's developed a sixth sense over the years, a special sensitivity to loss, and she is certain these are warnings. But of what? When Alice waves to her from the kitchen door Isabel joins the others.

Buster slips off his coat inside the door and uses the heel of one boot to pry off the other. He hears Walter downstairs with Hazel, getting a tour of the canning room. He leaves his hat on and surveys the living room. The drapes and carpet are both a dusty floral pattern and match the couch. Three oil paintings hang in wide wooden frames, pastoral scenes. Two miniature watercolours sit in tiny easels on the white plaster mantel along with a clock, a pair of white candlesticks decorated with an ivy design and, at the far end, a large orange carnival glass dish filled with hard ribbon candy. Walter's French horn case leans against the side of a wooden television cabinet that is sitting along the far wall beside a tree. Pine needles are already beginning to dry and scatter on the floor. The fresh smell fills the room. Candy canes dangle from branches like red-and-white question marks.

Buster expects to see Ivan and Susan planted in front of the television trading insults, but Lorraine called Alice earlier in the day with her regrets. Bob Bryson is in the rocking chair in one corner of the room. His wife is unable to attend, according to him, as she's taken Donny's younger sister and gone to care for her aging parents in Port Dover. Donny is a few feet away from his father, leaning up against the mantel where a pyramid of black cut-glass rocks are piled inside like a stack of coal. Beneath them the electric element flickers red and orange. Jelly Bean sits on the rose-coloured divan, flipping through a copy of the latest
Reader's Digest
. Her face blooms like a flower for a bee as soon as she sees Buster enter the room. She bites her lip to keep from spilling out unnecessary greetings.

Buster tips his hat in Doc John's direction and moves to join Jelly Bean on the couch. She is wearing a baby blue sweater set. Her blond hair is pulled off her face with a navy and white headband and dark roots are beginning to show. When Tom enters the living room Doc John interrupts his discussion with Bob. He reaches down to lower the footstool of his brand-new recliner and struggles to stand and shake Tom's hand.

“How's business?”

“Oh, can't complain, Doc.” Tom shakes firmly.

“Good. Now what can I offer you?”

“We've got ginger ale,” Alice calls out from the kitchen. “Apple cider and, my, I see someone's brought beer.” Isabel stops undressing Lizzie from her many layers and shoots her husband a sharp look.

“I'll have one of those,” says Bob.

“Sounds good. I'll have one too.” Tom slaps Doc John on the back. “Might even take up a pipe one of these days.”

Isabel moves to stand beside the divan with a fussy Lizzie in her arms.

“Is she colicky, Mrs. McFiddie?”

“No Judy, she's making up for missed meals. In fact here we go again. Excuse me.” Isabel carries the baby into the next room. Despite what people say about breastfeeding being wrong, even immoral, Isabel feels something special doing it. She knows she provokes talk but she doesn't care. She wishes that she'd done the same with her boys all those years ago and wonders whether Buster wouldn't still be more connected to her now if she had. She closes the door partway, settles on a chair and lifts her blouse. She undoes her brassiere so that the infant is able to burrow her face in and attach to a nipple. When Isabel looks up she finds Donny watching through the slim opening to the room. She notices the expression on the boy's face, how his brow furrows with displaced concentration. She smiles to herself but stops short of lifting her blouse an inch higher, and with it the boy's expectations.

“Cut it out, spy-boy,” Hank says, elbowing him.

“Huh. Oh.”

“You going to Ivan's bash?”

“Yeah, I'm going.”

“Jelly Bean, what about you?”

“Shush. I might, but I don't want Mother to hear.”

Walter and Hazel enter the living room from the kitchen and Walter plucks a candy cane from the tree, tosses it to his daughter.

“Now, isn't that lovely,” Hazel says, pointing to the electric fireplace. “It's absolutely lovely isn't it, Walter? I think I'd like one for myself. It isn't even real. I mean
that's
a benefit.”

“Here we go.” Alice carries in a full tray. “I've made tea for those who want something warm. Judy?” She motions for Jelly Bean to assist with the pouring and passing out of beverages. “Thank you, dear.”

Alice pours while Jelly Bean steadies each cup and saucer with both hands. Buster notices her chewed cuticles and ragged nails. Bob nurses his beer and inspects the chair and Donny leans back against the mantel, cranes his neck a bit farther and reaches his hand into the candy dish. Reaching, reaching, but still clasping at nothing. Isabel covers herself and returns to the living room.

“Come see this gadget.” Tom snaps his fingers to grab his wife's attention and Donny moves so she can pass. “Take a seat. There you go, now flip the button on the armrest.” Isabel does as instructed and allows the vibrations to purr beneath her. Donny plucks a long red hair from the headrest and discreetly slips it into his pants pocket.

“Amazing,” says Isabel leaning as far back as she can. “All this new technology.”

Hank steps forward. “Can I try?”

“Let your mother have a turn.”

“No it's all right Thomas.” Isabel rises once again and moves out of the way. “I've got my hands full.” She kisses Lizzie on the forehead. “Give it a crack Hank.”

Hank sits and adjusts the switch to its highest level. His whole body tingles and vibrates. He imagines Susan on his lap, her smooth arms looped around his neck. “Whoa, this is all right. Buster, you oughta try it.”

Buster shakes his head, grabs a ginger ale from the tray on the coffee table and leans back to watch the mute television in the corner. A man on the screen waves his hands dramatically about in the air, making what look to Buster like mad gestures. The audience swoons and is apparently moved beyond earthly reach. One woman contorts and twitches when the preacher reaches his hand out and places it atop her head. “Whatever he's curing her of,” Buster says, “looks like he's given her a holy seizure to replace it.”

“John, must we have that thing on today?”

“Oral Roberts. Best actor I ever seen. Better even than Billy Graham.”

“Well I think he's a scoundrel. He makes a mockery of religion.”

“I don't know.” Walter takes his turn in the chair, cranking out the footstool and resting both legs upon it. “Some people are pretty fond of him aren't they?” He gives his wife a nudge.

“He's got a way about him,” Hazel defends, her face the colour of the upholstery.

“Sure does. A way of paying
his
mortgage with
our
donations.”

“I'm mad for
Hit Parade,
” says Jelly Bean. “I watch it every chance I get.” She pours herself a cup of tea, spills some into the saucer and dips the end of the candy cane into the hot liquid, slurping because she knows it will irritate her mother. “What about you, Buster? What programs do you like?”

“I don't watch it much.”

“But if you had to say?”

He hates to be forced to participate in conversations. Since the accident, every time he turns around someone is trying to induce him to speak. With little privacy, one-word answers and vagaries are all that provide him space.
“Gunsmoke.”
He eyeballs Donny and casually pats his thigh. “Have Gun Will Travel.”

Donny blinks nervously, shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“So violent,” says Hazel, with a snort. “All that shooting. It's positively disgraceful.”

Tom reaches for a handful of walnuts from a dish on the end table. “The damnedest thing happened; a few months back Buster turned up with this old .38 Special. Most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on. Next to my wife of course. It had to be twenty, maybe thirty-odd years, wouldn't you say Buster? You should've seen it Doc.” The doctor nods and so do Walter and Bob. “Makes me think of the gun collection my father had when I was a boy.”

“Now there's a prime example,” says Hazel, as Alice returns from the kitchen with a dish of Isabel's maple fudge and shortbread, which she sets on the coffee table. “Your father was a good man, Tom, though with his temper, an argument against owning guns if ever there was one.” Tom pops another handful of nuts in his mouth and thinks how every hunting season his father shot the biggest deer the region had ever seen, record still unbroken.

“At least he kept the gun case locked,” he mumbles.

“Buster, where on earth did you get hold of such a thing?”