The Second Son (23 page)

In those days the stores in Alexandria stayed open till eleven o’clock on Saturday. The farmers were busy with their crops at that time of year and liked to come into town late in the day. A lot of them brought the family in for the early show at the Garry, then did their shopping after. Main Street was lit up all night, with crowds of people coming and going like the first of July, almost, or election night. Andrew had stayed home that day with a bout of the summer complaint and I was working.

I usually liked working Saturday night, mainly because I got to stay up so late. That night was different, though. Dory and my father were hardly speaking. She had given him two weeks’ notice, but it didn’t look like they would last that long. He had gone down to the Alex for a liquid supper and had been griping about the “big chains” all night. I mean, Dory was going to work for one of those chains in two weeks. He spent the evening by the front window where he could see the crowds going in and out of the Allied store farther down Main Street. He kept up a running commentary, naming anyone he saw who had run up a bill at his place, with special terms of endearment for the ones who were related to us. For the most part Dory ignored him. She would just look over at me and shake her head. I could see why she didn’t want to work for him any more. He was a mess.

Finally she blew up at him. “Goddammit, Ed! I’ve been listening to this bullshit complaining for months. I just can’t take it anymore.” She yanked off her apron and threw it on the counter, then marched into the back room to get her purse.

“Go ahead, leave!” he yelled after her. “I know you don’t want to be here, so leave. See if I care.” The only trouble was, anybody within the sound of his voice could tell he cared too much. That was his problem. It wasn’t just business. He thought he was being abandoned by all of Alexandria, the town he’d given his heart to. Dory probably knew that. She went out the back door without even saying goodbye to me. I’d give ten-to-one odds she was crying.

It was quarter to eleven when the old man locked the front door and turned out the lights. “You’ll have to walk home,” he snapped at me. “I’m going for a beer.”

“Aren’t you going to the Atlantic?” I didn’t know he had run up a big tab at the Atlantic and didn’t like being asked about it every time he went in, especially since Don MacDonald was its half-owner.

“I’m going down the street, to the Alex.”

“It closes at twelve, doesn’t it? Why can’t I wait for you?”

“Why can’t you walk?” he grumbled.

“Well, you’re not going to stay that long, are you? I don’t feel like walking home in the dark.”

He looked at me kind of funny, like he was trying to make up his mind whether or not to get drunk. At any rate he gave in and promised he’d pick me up in half an hour. I smiled at his back. That gave me enough time for a chocolate bar, a coke, and at least two smokes.

It was probably while I was sitting there, playing with the pack of matches, that it came to me. I looked around at all the packing paper from the vegetable crates, and all the cardboard boxes piled up beside the old desk and chair he had in that back storeroom, and thought about his big talk of burning the place down for the insurance. I thought about it for a while, and dismissed it as crazy. Then I thought about it again.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I heard him returning sooner than I expected. I know I didn’t want him to catch me smoking. And I’d like to think I was trying to throw that half-smoked cigarette into the green metal wastepaper basket beside the desk. Only I didn’t have time to check if it actually landed there. He was already back in the room, sniffing the air. “Have you been smoking, you little devil?” There was more than one beer in his voice.

I slid my yellowed fingers behind my back. “No,” I lied, “you were smoking just before you left. Remember?” I always had an alibi ready.

“You sure?” he asked. “You better not let me catch you.” Then he looked in the ashtray and saw the butt from my first smoke and seemed satisfied to let me lie. “Okay, let’s go.” He turned out the back lights and locked up behind us.

All the way home in the truck, I thought about that cigarette. Would it go out on its own? Or would it catch on the wood? Or the loose papers back there? Or was it in the wastebasket, where the paper would just burn out? Or jump to the cardboard boxes? I kept working through all those puzzles and permutations, including whether or not I should tell him I may have set the store on fire and solved all his problems, right up until I went to sleep. I guess what made it possible to go to sleep was the part about me waking up as the hero who had saved the family by finally doing what my father had been talking about for months.

“
LORNA
!
BOYS
!
WAKE UP
! The store’s on fire!” I never heard the phone ring, just my father yelling as he came pounding up the stairs. It was after one. The cigarette must have smouldered for a while. We all got dressed pretty quick and climbed into the car to head down there.

“How bad is it?” Andrew kept asking.

“I don’t know,” my father answered each time. “They didn’t say.” It only took a few minutes. The fire truck was just arriving and hooking up the hoses. People were turning up to watch the goings on, some in their pajamas and housecoats. It’s funny how there’s always enough people awake to show up for a fire.

It was obviously just a matter of saving the buildings on either side. We could already hear the canned goods popping inside the store. Another few minutes and the crowd was oohing and aahing at the sound of the plate-glass windows cracking from the heat. Then the flames licked their way outside and took hold of the grey siding — dry, cracked boards that must have been seventy-five years old. The big Orange Crush sign on the south wall glowed red for several minutes before it turned black.

We stood there, alone on the opposite side of Main Street, watching until the roof collapsed and all that was left of Landry’s Groceries was blackened walls and charcoaled spears of inside framing. A few people came over and expressed their sympathies, but mostly they kept their distance. They all knew the business was in trouble and they were probably already whispering at how convenient the fire was. My father must have been sensing that when he pulled me aside a few minutes after we got there and whispered some hard words in my face, “Listen. I don’t know what the fuck happened here. But you keep your mouth shut. You understand?”

I’d never heard him use that word before. I knew what it meant. He was really pissed off. “You mean — ”

He squeezed my arm and whispered again, “I’ll answer all the questions. You don’t know anything. You understand?”

Finally I nodded, hoping he was right, that I wouldn’t have to answer any questions. And hoping everything would be all right for us now, like he had talked about. I mean, this was what the Jews did. And they were all rich. Everybody knew that.

It must have been after four when my father finished talking to the firemen and we dragged ourselves home. I was glad when Andrew asked the question I had been dying to ask since the phone first rang. We were just coming into the driveway. “The store’s insured, isn’t it? Dad? You’re going to build it again, aren’t you?”

My father turned the key off and sat there, staring out the windshield, both hands still gripping the steering wheel. Andrew and I stayed on the edge of the seat, wondering what was happening, whether we should get out of the car or not. My mother finally put a hand on his arm. “Ed?”

After a long moment he shook his head slowly and muttered in a low voice, “Not a goddamn cent.”

“What do you mean?” she blurted.

He turned his head to look at her. “There’s nothing, Lorna. I haven’t paid anything on my insurance policy for the last six months, at least.”

“Oh, no,” she moaned. The tears were already forming in her eyes.

“And the stock was all on credit. I owe General Grocers almost three thousand dollars. We’re screwed, Lorna, screwed.”

What do you feel like when you hear that you’ve just ruined your family? Nothing. You feel nothing. You’re just numb, thinking a thousand different thoughts in such a jumbled-up way that you’re not really thinking at all. You’re in a daze, as though you’re outside yourself watching the questions zoom through your brain. Will they find out? Will they kick me out of the family? Is my life over? Is it really my fault? Was it really my cigarette? Can they tell it was my cigarette? Will I go to jail? Will they visit me? Will Gail ever talk to me again? Will anybody? Do I have to go to confession? Is it really a sin? Will Father McDonnell tell on me? It just goes on and on, your mind so filled with question after question after question, that by the time the numbness passes and the new reality starts taking over, you wake up one day and you realize you’ve survived, somehow. And life has gone on. Only it’s a different life, as I would soon find out.

It was early afternoon of the next day before Andrew and I were awake enough to go downtown and see what was left of the Landry’s livelihood. My father had already left, so we walked the old familiar route up Elm to Dominion and down Main. There were no waves to the neighbours that morning, no friendly chats. Even Rusty stayed on the porch.

I think Andrew was terrified. “Jeez, Mike, what’s going to happen to us?”

“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant, only I was preoccupied with what was going to happen to me, when the whole town found out I was a firebug.

“Don’t be so obtuse. Dad just lost his business. He’s broke now, a nobody. What do you think that makes us?”

“I dunno. He’s gonna to do something, isn’t he? Maybe open another store, do something at least. What’s the difference?”

“Jeez, dummy, haven’t you heard anything he’s been saying?”

“Don’t call me that.” I gave him an elbow in the ribs.

He didn’t even try to hit me back. “It’s just an expression.” He shook his head now as he saw the remains of the store in the distance. “Holy cow! There’s no way he’s rebuilding that mess. I heard him tell Mom this morning, no insurance and he’s in debt up to his eyeballs. There’s no way. The whole town’s gonna be laughing at us.”

“For what?”

“For losing everything, stupid. We’re nobodies now.”

“So what? They can go screw themselves.”

“That’s your problem. You never care what anybody thinks.”

“Why should I?” If he only knew, I was thinking.

“Well, you’ll see how you’re treated when your father isn’t a leading citizen anymore.”

“Leading citizen?” I scoffed. “You read too many books.”

“You’ll see,” he warned.

I wasn’t listening. We had arrived in front of the store and my father was digging around with a couple of firemen in the spot where the storeroom used to be. I had visions of one of them suddenly holding up a Player’s cigarette butt and exclaiming, “Ah-ha!”

I needn’t have worried. They were looking for the metal cashbox my father kept in the desk back there, the box he kept the unpaid customer accounts in, the only record he had of what was owed him. The desk was army surplus, metal, which I guess was why he found the box of bills unscathed when they pried the drawer open. He saw us standing there and raised the black box in triumph. “I got it, boys. We’re in luck.”

“Hey,” I was almost smiling, “isn’t that great? He can collect the money now.”

“Forget it,” Andrew muttered. “He’s only trying to make us feel better.”

“But all those people who owe us money, they’ll have to pay.”

“Yeah? How’s he gonna make them, if they haven’t paid by now? Some of those bills go back three or four years.”

“He can sue them, or something. Gail’s father sued somebody last year. For not paying him. She told me.”

“It was probably a lot of money. It’s common knowledge, you can’t sue somebody for sixty or a hundred dollars. And there must be a hundred or so people who owe us money.”

“Yeah, well . . . maybe we should sue Gail’s father. He’s the reason we’re in this mess.”

“You can’t blame him. It’s just business. If you want to be in business you have to face competition.”

“Yeah, well, he’s the one started up that Allied store. And that’s the reason — ”

“That’s irrelevant,” Andrew interjected. “Mom said. If it wasn’t him it would have been someone else. Besides, Gail’s uncle got the franchise. Mr. MacDonald just backed him.”

“You and your big words. You think you’re a big shot now, all graduated and everything.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it. Allied is moving into all the small towns around here. If it wasn’t Mr. McPhee who got the franchise it would have been someone else. You can’t be in business without competition from somebody.”

I was too proud to ask what a franchise was. “You’re just saying that ’cause Gail’s your girlfriend.”

“Baloney. You’re just jealous.”

“I am not. Take that back.” I grabbed him by the arm and was shaking a fist at him when my father yelled.

“Mike, cut that out. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

I let Andrew go and tried to look like I didn’t know what he was talking about. Andrew was curious. “What does he mean? What did you do?”

“I dunno, nothing.” I followed my brother over to where my dad was standing with the box of bills. What I really wanted to do was run in the other direction and keep on going. Then I remembered what he had said the night before about keeping my mouth shut — and started hoping against hope that he and I were going to have some kind of secret, that it would be the two of us against the world.

That wasn’t quite what he had in mind. He got me alone later that afternoon and told me how it was really going to be. “Okay, my friend,” he demanded, “let’s have it. Were you smoking in that storeroom last night?”

He was holding himself real tight and I knew I was in deep shit. I answered with the slightest of nods, hoping, I suppose, to influence the strength of his reaction. It didn’t work. He slapped me hard on the side of the head.

“Goddammit,” he cursed, “why the hell didn’t you admit it last night? I’d have checked that butt and made sure it was out.”