The Devil's Dust (3 page)

C
arl Levesque answers on the third ring with some rehearsed tagline about business coming back to Ste. Bernadette, blowing in on a northern tailwind. He appears eager to meet McKelvey and discuss rental opportunities. He asks McKelvey to meet him at the Coffee Time on Main Street, three blocks down from the Station Hotel. McKelvey walks with the collar turned high on his too-thin trench coat, for the day is bone-chilling and he has forgotten how the cold works so quickly, how your back hurts from the strain of your body's attempt to fold into itself. More than half of the storefronts are boarded up, and McKelvey finds himself slowing down, trying to remember the various incarnations of these places so long ago.

Murray's Five and Dime, where he bought comic books and jawbreakers, the place always smelling of sawdust and those bricks of bright yellow soap that Murray kept stacked in pyramids on tables — so that McKelvey as a boy imagined they were gold bricks, probably dug from the mine where his father worked. And there had been Poulson Mercantile and Sundry, where you could buy rough underwear that had been manufactured by people whose primary goal was to punish small children, or sit at the small lunch counter in back and order a creamy malted milkshake if your mother was in a generous mood. McKelvey smiles now at the memory of asking his mother repeatedly what exactly “sundry” was supposed to mean. And how she tried unsuccessfully to explain the strange notion of dry goods and paper products and envelopes and, well, everything in the place that didn't happen to be something you could wear.

He bought a package of Club chewing tobacco in there when he was sixteen. Kept a wad in his mouth for exactly fourteen seconds before spitting out the glistening tar-black gob behind his house. He had been aiming for toughness, these miners he saw with their cheeks full of the stuff like chipmunks storing food for winter.

He stops in front of a boarded-up unit with a sign that says
VIDEO AND GAME SHACK
, and steps into the alcove to read the paper posted to the inside of the glass door: a foreclosure for failure to pay rent. Almost eighteen months ago now. He catches the name Carl Levesque within the legal mumbo-jumbo. This place was, at one time, perhaps fifty years ago now, a barbershop called Bud's. He closes his eyes and he can actually smell the inside of the barbershop …

He can see the multi-coloured bottles of aftershave and hair tonic, the neon blue disinfectant for the black combs, the lather creams, the strong, manly scent of sandalwood and alcohol, tobacco smoke, and sweat. How old Bud would set a board across the chair, heft him up, wrap a red apron around his neck, push his head forward, and begin to work with the scissors. The sound of stainless steel parts working in concert. McKelvey keeps his eyes closed, pretending not to follow the conversation between his father and Bud and the other men assembled in the barbershop, this sanctuary of all things male. They speak in loose code about local women, about their physical attributes, then on to hunting, drinking. When the haircut is done, Bud takes a hard-bristled brush and whisks away the hair trimmings from the back of his neck, and the brush hurts, but he doesn't say anything, not ever. Bud with his big boxer's face that reminds McKelvey of an old bulldog with sad, bloodshot eyes
.
Bud always gives him a lollipop from an old coffee tin he keeps under the cash.

McKelvey opens his eyes, stamps his feet against the cold, and moves on down the sidewalk, filled with a sense of loss for something that is gone both for himself and the rest of the world, all of the generations to come. And he thinks it might be something called innocence or perhaps the unspoiled pleasures of simplicity and gratitude for the small gestures in life.

Carl Levesque is leaning over the counter chatting with the middle-aged clerk, a woman who looks as though she believes despite overwhelming odds in the promise of meagre satisfaction from this life. She is attractive despite a world-weary weight to her eyes and her face, though McKelvey can tell she was likely a knockout in her youth, black hair tied back. There are two old men seated at individual tables near the window, each of them quietly sipping coffee and reading newspapers, likely enjoying the time away from their wives. The swivel stools that run along the counter are empty.

“Well, that must be Mr. McKelvey,” Levesque says as he turns upon hearing the jingle of bells tied to the door.

McKelvey nods and holds out his hand as he approaches the real-estate-agent-cum-small-town-entrepreneur.

“What'll you have, Charlie? Do you mind if I call you Charlie?”

“It's my name,” McKelvey says. And he smiles at the woman now as he squints to read the nametag pinned to her ugly beige uniform blouse:
Peggy
.

“Anything you want,” Levesque says with a sweep of his hand across the vista of stale doughnuts, a half-empty fountain well of lemonade, and two pots of coffee. Levesque smiles, pleased with himself at this generous offering. McKelvey sees instantly that this man is a salesman, has likely sold a little of everything in his life — toilet brushes and cars with bad radiators — and he would get on your nerves if you spent too much time with him.

“I'll take a small coffee, black,” McKelvey says. He no longer cares about the regimen imposed in the aftermath of his gastrointestinal hemorrhage, which was partly, though only partly, responsible for his early exit from the force. No more plain Balkan-style yogourt, no more celery snagged in his teeth for him, no sir, not since Dr. Shannon delivered The News
. So, fuck it.
Black coffee, please
. And suddenly his entire body thrums with desire for a cigarette, even though it's been a miraculous three months since he gave up on trying to ration himself or otherwise control the uncontrollable, which is to say he quit cold turkey.

“No cherry stick?” Levesque asks, and pokes McKelvey in the belly. It's a move that instantly provokes a reptilian response within McKelvey — he clenches his teeth and swallows the urge to snap the man's finger.
Don't touch me
, he could say.
Not ever
. “I gotta tell you, they're goddamned dynamite,” Levesque continues. “I eat, what, two or three a week?”

He says this to Peggy, who has already poured McKelvey's coffee.

“A day, more like it,” Peggy says.

Levesque laughs, and it sounds like gravel pouring through a tin culvert, forced and over-loud. At the tail end of the laugh there is a wheeze in the man's lungs, this constricted exhalation. McKelvey imagines the man chain-smoking two packs a day. Sitting behind a cheap metal desk in some trailer on a used car lot, watching the door, willing it to open, asking everyone about the weather, how about that rain, how about that goddamned heat. McKelvey is already finding it hard to like this man.

“Thanks, Peggy,” McKelvey says, and nods. “I'm Charlie.”

“You're welcome, ‘I'm Charlie,'” she says, and then turns to busy herself with straightening things on the counter behind her.

Seated at a table, Levesque proceeds to pour half a pound of sugar into his own coffee, stirring and stirring. McKelvey is reminded of someone mixing cement. He takes a pull on his coffee and is relieved to discover it is not as bad as the bowel-blitzing sludge the old-timers are swilling down at the Station. It's a wonder they're still alive, though he supposes what hasn't killed them has in fact made them stronger.

Levesque noisily slurps a taste of his coffee and, satisfied with his chemistry, he sits back and clasps his hands. McKelvey notices a Mason's ring. Levesque says, “So then, friend, what brings you to the whirling metropolis of Ste. Bernadette?”

Levesque is a squat man, shaped like a block, and he is unable to accept the fact of his balding. The long strands of brown-grey hair that remain have been swirled in a loop in the centre of his head, likely held there by a combination of sheer determination and hairspray. McKelvey notices everything — clothes, posture, eyes, gestures — the smallest indicators that for years were his stock and trade as a cop on the beat in Toronto, in fraud investigations, and finally on the Hold-Up Squad. He sees Levesque now, sitting across from him with a wide grin, his sports coat too tight and the bad comb-over, and he is reminded of a case he once worked when he was on the Fraud Squad. A pyramid scheme of sorts, worth about a million all told, and it turned out the mastermind behind the whole operation was an unemployed shoe salesman — and Levesque reminds him of everything about the perp.

“It's been a long time since I was back home,” McKelvey says. He glances over at the counter and he catches Peggy's eye. He gives a small smile.

“You were born and raised here? I didn't know that. Well, welcome home, Charlie. I bet the place has changed a lot.”

“You could say that.”

“Sure as hell has changed in the four years since I moved here. Came through town on my way out east from Kenora. I was running a business up there, had the rights to a process whereby you remove this substance from pulp, you know, from the mills, this substance with a name I can't even pronounce —
placto-u-nameen something
— about fourteen consonants in it and sixteen chemistry elements. Anyway, it's used in the production of industrial-grade adhesives. We never got off the ground because of the goddamned banks and the assbackward government in this country, but …”

McKelvey watches the man and notices the exact spot where he loses himself, his words simply evaporate before him. Rather than jump in to pull Levesque from the strange tangent, he sips his coffee and waits. He has nowhere to be, no plans.

“Anyhoo,” Levesque says, drawing back. “Stopped for a few days in Ste. Bernadette and bingo, four years later I own half the town.”

“Duncan at the hotel was mentioning something about that. You want to open a casino resort?”

Levesque laughs again, and again it is too loud in the small coffee shop. Like someone trying too hard at a party to laugh at all of the host's jokes.

“Oh, I've got plans, you could say that. Yes, sir, I've got plans. But we'll have time for all of that, my friend. Right now let's talk about how I can help you. You're looking for a short-term rental, is that right? Something maybe semi-furnished?”

McKelvey sits back and exhales a long breath. What he is looking for he can't quite say. Short-term, long-term, a parade, a trip to the moon, a little peace and quiet. His eyes move to the front window, the view of Main Street. A few cars roll slowly by. No pedestrian traffic. He misses Front Street with its shops and restaurants, the grocery store open twenty-four hours, the swirl and smells of the St. Lawrence Market with its hanging meats and strange slippery seafood. He misses Garrity's Pub just below his condo, the way his whole mood would change when he crossed the threshold. He is suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that he has been foolish, both for coming all the way up here with no real purpose, but also for trusting this used car salesman to look after his primary need at this point in time, which happens to be shelter.

“Duncan mentioned my old house might be available,” McKelvey says.

“Where did you live?”

“20 King Street.”

Levesque's eyes brighten, and McKelvey can practically see the dollar signs turning like lemons and crowns rolling on a slot machine.

“It's your lucky day, Charlie,” Levesque says. And he smiles.

Levesque's car is a 1995 black Cadillac sedan, something with a lot of miles on it, but McKelvey figures that looking out at the hood ornament makes the man feel as though he has somehow arrived. They slip inside the vehicle and Levesque turns the key. It takes a moment to catch, the teeth in the starter grinding against bone, and then the car fills with a booming voice from some self-help tape.

“True leaders wake up every day and they ask themselves this one question —”

Levesque reaches out and switches the volume off. He flips the sun visor, grabs a package of cigarettes, and pops one in his mouth.

“Don't mind if I smoke there, Charlie?”

“It's your car,” McKelvey says. “I smoked on and off for forty years.”

And it is hard to believe, hearing himself admit this out loud. For close to four decades he stuck cylinders of nicotine and tobacco into his yap. This would be twice as long as his son lived on this planet. Life is not fair.
Gavin would be twenty-two this year
.
Probably finishing college.
And here he is, old and skinny, sitting in a pimp's car beside some shoe salesman sucking on a goddamned cigarette. He
wants a pain pill. Something to close around him like a glove.

“What was the longest you stayed off them?” Levesque hits the button to roll his window down a few inches.

“Six, seven years one time,” McKelvey says. “When my son was born, both my wife and I quit. I guess I quit with her just to be in solidarity. She stayed off them. But you know, eventually you start sneaking your way back.”

“I can't quit them. I've accepted my failings in that area, you know. I'm going to smoke. I'm a smoker. Probably kill me one day, but …”

Levesque sucks at the cigarette. It is a Player's Light Regular. McKelvey's old brand. The sailor on the cover with his stoic face …

“I'd take one, actually,” McKelvey hears himself say. And he senses within himself this mechanism at play — if it had a sound, it would be a
click
. Something he attempted but failed to properly convey to his therapist, the one to whom he was referred by his family doctor. Dr. Shannon saying he should see a therapist a couple of times a week, keep a journal of his “feelings” —
anything and everything, just to write it out
. The “mental stuff,” Shannon explained, being just as important as the “medical stuff” during cancer treatment. The thing is, McKelvey wants to know why he should care. As though keeping a journal or discussing his fears — or sparing himself from the ravages of tobacco, for that matter — will be the tipping point in his so-called “breakthrough.” There is no trick to this; it is simply one foot in front of the other. Whatever waits for him up ahead has been waiting there all the days of his life.