The Governor of the Northern Province (9 page)

The first few times he came to the lot, the salesmen, their fat chests heaving and key chains jangling, had taken professionally responsible interest in him. They were following two universal commandments in sales. First, a man always wanted a new one and just needed help admitting as much to himself. Second, an unidentified black male looking at your merchandise was a cup of hot coffee tipping at your crotch. But enough of the salesmen knew something of Bokarie; they had seen him around town or bought smokes and scratch cards from his counter or heard him (via their wives) speak for Little Caitlin at that rally. One even had video footage of him playing soccer with his kids. Poor harmless this and that. So, if with a little disappointment at the lost opportunity for a little Sunday excitement, they accepted him as a vaguely identified black male who thus wasn't subject to the recommendations outlined in a “For Your Eyes Only” pamphlet that the manufacturer had sent on from Detroit.
Customer Satisfaction, Racial Profiling and Loss Prevention: Some Difficult Statistics to Consider
.

So the salesmen returned to their standard Sunday afternoon pursuit of gifting the gloriously plump-assed receptionist with the in-season peaches their wives packed for them and then snickering and aching behind office partitions to watch the late teen bite down and oh how it squirted and then her slurping the dribble up from her chin. Meanwhile, Bokarie was allowed to dip in and out of the rows and peer into windows and under hoods in the repair bay, which is how he met Glenn the Engine, who was in one Sunday to work on the car he was overhauling as a wedding gift to his future son-in-law.

Hollerwatty was the shape and colour of a beefsteak tomato slow-cooking on a barbecue grill. His colouring was especially strong in the summer months, when he spent long stretches at the family place on the St. Lawrence River tinkering with the boat motor so he could drive over to the local sandy beach and grip an afternoon cold one and watch the limber lifeguard girls stretch and yawn. But back at the office, he was always popping and bursting and reddening at monthly sales figures and trade-in overpayments and especially inventive dirty jokes and ethnic nicknames.
Glenn the Engine made his first successful vehicle sale at the age of twelve—a homemade Go Kart outfitted with a lawnmower motor, to a grateful and awed classmate—and he's been the prime mover in this community ever since!
The caption accompanied The Engine's personal portrait, which was placed centre-top in the school portable the dealership used as a sales office and also figured prominently in the advertorial literature regularly placed in the local newspaper. In addition to great deals on late-model Fords and reasonable repair rates, Glenn was widely known and respected for his penchant for quoting the Old Testament. He did this for a variety of reasons—rhetorical flourish, bona fide morality, intervention from on high at a crucial moment in a deal. Glenn's favourite, in this last respect, was Proverbs 31, which he used when he had a suddenly panicked, mortgage-calculating husband and a pro-purchase wife at the pre-point-of-sale moment. Just when things were fully dilated for a new car to drive home.

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

Glenn also drew on the best of Job when agreeing to accept a jalopy rust-bucket trade-in, and the darker tracts of Exodus when a customer made noises about buying Nip or Kraut instead. (If anyone asked, he would explain that his father lost a leg in France, so he had a right to these terms.) He had also been reading Daniel and John of Patmos of late, searching for push-back and righteous anger for when he was asked about that terrible ugliness being born. Hybrids. When pressed, Glenn admitted that he had little interest in the New Testament; there was just no business sense—all those upturned money tables and JC whipping businessmen just trying to get by and those thirty silver pieces with poor returns.

They met under the corrugated ceiling of a 1987 Ford Mustang. Priding himself on knowing all things in advance, The Engine was nonplussed to find Bokarie in his pneumatic garden. He even vaguely recognized the thin black rail of a body from a newspaper picture from a while back. Munificent, he decided to have a chat.

Bokarie was quietly lacerating himself. He was getting just so soft in this new country. He hadn't even noticed the squat round body mashed against the other side of the car when he first came upon it, and he was surprised at how friendly, how unsuspicious, how interested the man seemed, staring at him from across the engine. This seemed too easy from what Bokarie knew of Great Men from his past and about this man specifically, from all the pictures around the compound and in his bunker and also on the full-page back cover of the local newspaper most days. Even the General would be impressed, he thought.

So Bokarie went into full newcomer mode while he tried to figure Glenn. He recalled once again how the other asylum cases had dealt with the trip-tongued Newfoundland immigration officers when they'd first arrived on the tanker. Like the Tamils and Falun Gongs then, he smiled apologetically and curved his back into a pitiable bow in response to the questions about his name, his prior whereabouts, etc. To be extra helpful, Bokarie unhooked the yellow lamp that was hanging above the engine and held it over his interlocutor's plug-twisting, cap-cursing fingers as they worked. This was his great fortune—a
deus ex
machine shop coincidence. The Engine sported a black little livery boy ceramic statue in his landscaped garden. It was the one element that had survived of the Old South motif he had originally wanted for his custom-made executive mansion. His wife had vetoed pillars as “just too paving-contractor Italian,” and the building company representative had seconded her opinion and also noted the logistical problems of adding Greco-Roman flourishes to a ranch plan home, however grand it was.

So when Glenn saw his statue come to life, right up in his grille, his juicy eyes grew fat and excited, but he thought better of asking directly about the wedding. Instead, and guessing this might have an effect on the African if he was a down-through-the-ages Ham boy or some new evangelical, he went to Scripture. “Today is the tenth day of the seventh month of the year,” he started in, “or thereabouts. I'm no literalist. But do you know Leviticus 16?” He gutted and scraped and spat from his throat, ready to deliver from on high.

“‘On this day, the Lord God commanded Moses, you shall deny yourselves and shall do no work, neither the citizen'”—here Glenn pressed a plump hand against his man-busty chest for clarity—“‘nor the alien who resides among you'”—then a second hock extended a sausagey finger towards Bokarie. “What do you think? Should I take this as a sign, your coming here to me on this day? That maybe we should sit down for a chat and I should just accept that the Lord deemed it good that the Parts Shop rest on Sunday, which means I can't get a new fan belt for this damned pony?” He back-slap-chuckled Bokarie out of the garage and towards his office. He could tell from the man's shoes and evident lack of dental coverage that this wasn't a walk-on sales opportunity, but there was, Glenn hoped, another possibility here.

When they were seated, The Engine in his ergonomic throne and Bokarie on a cigarette- and coffee-scored customer chair, the young man from far away was invited to tell a little more about himself. Bokarie gave the now-standardized version of his story—Rwanda, etc.—which had the usual effect. The Canadian nodded and exhaled and shook his head and curved his eyebrows empathetically.

Then, because what the hell, Bokarie mentioned how he had for many suns longed to drive one of Mr. Engine's fine chariots. He couldn't have known how consonant this desire was. Sensing that it would strengthen his case with this man, Bokarie recalled lines from his orphanage time, about sharing with others. The priest had taught them to the boys, and they linked up nicely with Glenn's earlier invocation.

“And Mr. Engine, sir, I think you should grant this my humble request. Because as it is written, ‘You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them'”—here both of his hands turned inward, long knifelike fingers pointing at his burnt little birdcage chest—“‘for the poor and the alien.'” He paused, hopeful.

Glenn was tempted to finish the sentence, but thought better of it. The implications could compromise his transactional independence.

“Where'd you learn the Bible, son?” he asked.

“From a priest, back when I was an orphan.” Bokarie cursed himself. This was his first wrong step since coming to Canada, the first revelation of something from his own past instead of from someone else's, be it the Liberian he strangled by the man's necktie in the tanker, or a snipped story from the International Briefs section of the newspaper, or a retelling of a segment from the Aid to Africa charity programs broadcast late at night that he watched to make his insomniac paranoia useful. He wanted to leave the office; he had lost interest in a chance to drive. It was too much of a risk, too many questions could follow, and even one of those dazzling, juicy Fusions wasn't worth it. He had spent too much time around that Jennifer. He wasn't just becoming soft, he was getting greedy.

To Bokarie's good fortune, however, The Engine was too interested in what this black cord of a new Canadian could do for him in the here and now to wonder about the man's life back then. He parried in plain old folksy car dealer.

“Learning the Bible from a priest? My goodness, that's a surprise. All we got around here are Frenchy Canadian Catholics, and they wouldn't know the Bible if it hit them in their rummy noses!” Bokarie heaved and pulled his shoulders in unison with the chortling Engine, who further explained that he himself subscribed to no particular church but certainly loved his Bible and it did him no small good in getting him to the place where he was today. Grateful for the change in subject, Bokarie made his eyes wide and admiring. He leaned in to hear more about The Engine, who then had little trouble getting himself a bona fide Miss Daisy driver for his daughter's wedding. Glenn even threw in a couple of invites to the wedding proper like they were heated seats.

III.

“Please, can you tell me, what are these things? These butterfly kisses?” Bokarie was watching everyone watch Glenn, the Father, have his dance with Cat, the Bride. He was standing beside Austin, the Best Man, who was chewing gum furiously to mask how drunk he was. Which, by now, was beside the point. At the summit of his toast, he had started advising the Groom on the best possible approach to his pending
primae noctis
only to stop short and shrug, “But you've been there, done that, eh buddy!”

Austin's speech was met with the chill clinking of champagne flutes, the only sound in the hall save the slapping-meat thwack of sweaty high-fives that a fellow drunk-hearty groomsman gave the Best Man as he returned to his seat.

Bokarie and Austin suddenly smiled and posed like old linemates for disposable-camera pictures that the latter's engaged-to-be-engaged girlfriend took before she waddled off in search of a girlfriend, and then the tequila-cracked tuxedo shrugged a conspirational response to Bokarie's question. “Spend a little more time around here, Shaft, and you'll get the way things always are in this town. That dance? The usual world-revolves-around-Glenn-the-Engine bullshit. Which we all have to clap to and agree to, obviously. Because guess what this town and the new married man have in common? They're both totally whipped. Do you get that joke from where you're coming from? Listen hey buddy, that's between us, eh buddy there? Never know when you're going to need a good deal on a half-ton! Speaking of which”—now giggling himself, remembering that hulking shape from high school—“looks like your date's here.” He staggered off for another shot and in search of a bridesmaid rumoured to be tight-lipped and on the rebound.

Jennifer had just finished affixing a pink ribbon to the gift table. She was standing beside Bokarie, looking intently at the parquet floor. She wanted to dance, given the prospects. Think Pink. The town's most important man was almost alone out there, and she had already cleared it with the videographer, who agreed that it would make for a beautiful image, the Bride dancing with the town's prominent newcomer, encircled by the smiling citizenry done up in their church socks and feathered hair finery. She had already asked for a copy of the reception dance video.

If her impending campaign for a federal seat were to have any success, she needed the riding's most important endorsement. “Butterfly Kisses” was trailing off and the deejay was mixing in Chubby Checker. It was time to make their move. Standing in the middle of the dance floor to applause and whistles, the Father and Bride posed and mugged for pictures. Such Freudian glee. At the same time Glenn, fairly done in by champagne toasts and a flask that had been emptied during the purgatorial photographer's session after church, gave out choice cuts from Solomon's Song while Cat sweet-mouthed, “You're my best friend never change this will be you someday,” with venomed cuteness, to each of her
I can't believe you're not married yet!
bridesmaids. Who were openly crying because they were just so so happy for her.

Jennifer clamped Bokarie's wrist. She explained to her grateful partner what it meant to cut in on someone else's dance and they started marching. She was immense and target ready, as always, only this time squared up in a pink sheet of a dress and sporting a mother-done upturn for which Jennifer had endured a
sotto voce
parable from Barb Thickson, about how many people meet their you-know-whats at weddings, and that a career's one thing but a man can pay the bills
and
put out the trash. It had been Gus Thickson's wording and was delivered with gunpoint enthusiasm.