The Wanton Troopers (9 page)

“But don't sing nothin' that's too cripeless mournful!” Eben said.

Judd gulped brew and tossed the mug to the sawyer.

“No hard feelin's,” he said. “No hard feelin's.”

“No, Juddie. No hard feelin's.”

“I'd hate tuh think this beer of mine had stirred up hard feelin's between any of the boys.”

“No, Juddie. There ain't no hard feelin's.”

“Are yuh sure, Angus? Are yuh sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure, Juddie. No hard feelin's.”

“I'm glad tuh hear that, Angus. I wouldn't want any hard feelin's. I ain't that kind of a feller, Angus. I don't hold no hard feelin's.”

“No, nor me, Juddie. I never held no hard feelin's against a man in my whole life.”

“Are yuh sure, Angus?”

“Yeah, I'm sure as sure, Juddie. No hard feelin's a-tall.”

“Shake on it?”

“Put'er there, Juddie!”

The two men shook hands.

“Sing somethin',” Eben cried. “Sing somethin' for cripes' sake!”

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

Here's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckaroo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

While Judd sang, Eben resumed his dance. As he gambolled and capered he blew his cheeks full of air, then slapped his face with his palm, as though his mouth were a drum.

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooooo!”

“Anybody wanta jump through the broom?” Todd shouted.

“Ain't got no broom.”

“Get me a fork, then. Anythin'll do.”

While Judd sang and Eben danced, Todd fetched a fork. He grasped the tip of the handle with one hand and the base, just above the tines, with the other. The fork and his arms made a trapeze level with his knees, bending slightly; he jumped over the handle and laughed triumphantly, holding the fork behind him.

“Anybody else able tuh do that?”

“Nobody else is crazy enough tuh try,” Angus jeered.

“Huh? Yuh sayin' I'm crazy?” Todd's red eyes gleamed.

“No, he ain't sayin' yer crazy, Toddie!” Eben yelled. “Come on now, let's all have another drink! Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooooo!”

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooooo!” Eben screamed. “Cripes! Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooooooooooo!”

After two hours in the barn, Judd went away with the men. When he returned, it was supper time. He staggered into the kitchen, roaring with drunken laughter, and dumped an armful of groceries on the table.

Grabbing Mary by the shoulders, he spun her around and rubbed her cheek with his unshaven chin. This was as close as he ever came to kissing her.

“Hel-oh-ah-Mar!” he roared.

She laughed and pushed him away.

“Oh, you big silly!” she chided him.

He jerked a bottle from under the bib of his overalls, screwed off the cap and drank noisily.

There was girl in our town,

In our town did dwell,

She loved her husband dearly

But another man twice as well!

“Kevin!” he thundered. “Kevin!”

Kevin approached him, grinning nervously. And Judd exploded with laughter and grabbed the seat of Kevin's shorts and swung him high in the air. Such romping was as close as he ever came to a caress.

Kevin squirmed and kicked, but he did not really want to get away. He enjoyed the sense of helplessness he felt in his father's arms.

Judd threw him on the floor and knelt beside him, wrestling with him, tickling the backs of his knees and his armpits. He jerked up Kevin's shirt and poked his navel with a finger, rolled him over and smacked the seat of his pants, pinched his ear lobes and mussed his hair, grasped his ankles and stood him on his head, until Kevin was giggling hysterically, his eyes blurred and dilated with excitement.

“Fight me now! Fight me!” Judd ordered.

Kevin stood up. Judd knelt, facing him.

They boxed. Judd caught most of Kevin's blow on his palms. His own fist opened just before it landed and he slapped Kevin's cheeks and ears briskly with his open hand.

“That's enough!” Judd cried. “I give up! Yuh beat me!”

He squatted on the floor and drank from his bottle.

Kevin laughed. His face was still stinging from the force of Judd's slaps. But he was happy.

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

Judd had bought bologna, canned pineapple, peanut butter, marmalade, oranges, and the canned clams that he liked to eat cold and raw when he was drunk.

Supper was a feast. Kevin chewed slowly, extracting the last drop of flavour from the moist peanut butter, rolling the shreds of syrupy pineapple pulp on his tongue. At certain seasons, the O'Briens went weeks without tasting any food other than bread, milk, eggs, and potatoes.

Judd, who claimed to have no taste for such delicacies, ate clams and drank black tea out of a tin mug, blowing on it to cool it. He was proud of the food piled on his table, Kevin knew, and basked in the excitement of his wife and son as though their hunger were a kind of tribute.

Nine

Judd got drunk on weekdays only when the mill shut down because of rain or a failure in the machinery. On most nights, he ate supper, worked for an hour or two in the garden or in the barn, then dozed on the cot until Mary called him to bed. But on rare occasions, after the kerosene lamps were lit, he sat at the kitchen table and made pictures, while Kevin leaned across his arm, his chin resting in his palms, and watched. From time to time, Mary left her chair to glance at Judd's handiwork and laugh. Gripping the lead pencil as though it were an axe handle, pressing it down so hard he tore through the paper, Judd drew preposterous fat horses with melancholy eyes and great, dropping bellies. As he sketched, his forehead wrinkled in concentration and he chewed at his lips and moistened his pencil with his tongue. Kevin watched, eyes narrowed, lips drawn back from his teeth.

“Now, this here's a mule,” Judd explained, “Bet yuh ain't never seen a mule, eh?”

“Jist in pictures, I guess.”

“Yeah. Well, this here's a mule.”

Judd dampened the graphite with saliva and sketched a beast with long, triangular ears.

“Drove a team of mules when I was Out West,” Judd explained. “Stubbornest damn things yuh ever seen.”

He pencilled a harness on the mule. Over the years, Kevin had heard his father speak often, but always briefly, of his experience Out West. Like many Lockhartville men, Judd had gone on a harvest excursion to Saskatchewan in his youth. When they reminisced about their days on the wheat harvest, most of the men claimed they wished they had not come home. “If I'da knowed then what I know now,” Judd would say. “I'da never come back. That's a big country — Out West.” To Kevin, the Out West spoken of by his father was as exotic as the lands depicted on pink and blue maps in the back of the Bible.

Now Judd swept up his sketches and wadded them in his fists.

“Guess that's enough foolishness for tonight,” he said shortly.

He removed the chimney from the lamp, touched the paper to the wick, and carried the flaming sheets to the stove, where he tossed them into the fire box.

“Judd!” Mary cried. “You'll burn the house down!”

“Eh? Jist gittin' rid of some damn foolishness.”

He lay down on the cot. Five minutes later, he was snoring. Kevin knew that his father would have died rather than have any man in Lockhartville know that he had amused himself by making pictures. Such games were for children and idiots.

In other evenings, Grandmother O'Brien sat under the kerosene lamp and read aloud from the Bible.

All the mill people held the Bible in superstitious respect. So it was with Judd. When his mother read, he threw his cigarette in the stove; he would have considered smoking during a Bible reading the most egregious vulgarity. He lay on the cot with his hands under his head, eyes open, listening.

Kevin sat on the arm of his mother's rocking chair. Putting her hands under the armrest, Mary took his hand. They held hands slyly, unknown to Judd and Martha, who would have snorted in disgust had they observed the gesture. From time to time, his mother gave him a little intimate, confiding smile. He breathed the familiar lilac and wintergreen fragrance of her perfume, felt the rich warmth of her body. And Grandmother O'Brien read:

And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born, thy navel
string was not cut, neither was thou washed in water to
supple thee, nor wast salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None
eye pitied thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast
cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person in the
day that thou wast born . . .

Kevin shuddered and his mother's grip on his fingers tightened. Martha seemed to read less with piety than with grim satisfaction. Under the book resting in her lap lay her hot, wool-wrapped brick.

And as I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own
blood, I said unto thee that wast in thy blood, Live; yes, I
said unto thee that was in thy blood, Live. I have caused thee
to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased
and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned and thine hair is grown, whereas
thou wast naked and bare . . .

Grandmother O'Brien loathed nakedness, Kevin knew. “Devilish,” he had heard her say. “Ain't no other name for it but clear sheer devilish! Them young girls runnin' around in them bathin' suits — why, they might jist as well leave their backsides bare and be done with it. That June Larlee! Ugh! They oughta be whipped, all of 'em. They oughta be whipped good and proper. Naked! Devilish, I call it. Devilish!” And her eyes would burn with scorn and rage.

Now, when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold
thy time was the time of love and I spread my skirt over thee
and covered thy nakedness; yes, I swore unto thee and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou
becamest mine . . .

Later that night, Kevin awoke to the sound of his grandmother singing:

There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

And, lying there in the dark, Kevin remembered a time, long ago, when he had gone hunting with his father.

He was six years old, and for weeks his father had promised to take him hunting.

When the day finally came, Kevin was almost beside himself with excitement.

He was then very small and he danced and chattered until his father told him that unless he was quiet, he would not be allowed to go. His antics would frighten away the deer, his father said.

Terrified of being left home, Kevin fell silent and walked on tiptoe. He looked on admiringly as his father dismantled the .22 calibre rifle and hid the parts under his overalls bib.

“Season don't open for another month. Never know when yuh might run intuh a warden,” Judd explained.

In this long-ago time, Kevin did not know what a “season” might be, and he suspected that a “warden” might be some ferocious species of beast. But he had learnt not to ask questions of his father, who usually responded by shaking his head in disgust and reprimanding him for his stupidity.

They tramped across the heath and down the abandoned logging road. As they walked on, they came to taller trees, spruce and balsam fir, and the shadows around them thickened. Kevin alternately walked and trotted, keeping up to his father, who never slowed his pace for him.

At intervals, the road was lost in huge puddles of muddy water, clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes humming above them. Judd waded the puddles with Kevin perched on his shoulders, his legs scratched by the denim of his father's smock, his father's horny hands gripping his knees.

Once across the puddle, Judd stopped quickly and dropped him and Kevin walked again, secretly disappointed, wishing his father would carry him all the way. He would have loved to have ridden mile after mile on his father's back, swaying in time to his stride. But he knew this wish was babyish. So he buried it, and felt ashamed.

“Yuh gittin' tired?” Judd asked suspiciously.

“Gosh, no,” Kevin answered quickly, afraid of being sent home.

They walked until Kevin was convinced that he had trudged for a hundred miles.

He panted like a collie, and when he tried to hurry, a stitch of pain scalded his side.

“Yuh gittin' tired?” Judd demanded again.

“Gosh, no,” Kevin answered. “I ain't tired.”

“Then don't make so damn much noise,” his father admonished him.

They came out of the woods at the edge of a field in which the grass grew as high as Kevin's waist and where there were innumerable daisies like white and gold stars.

“We'll stop here for a spell,” Judd announced.

Kevin threw himself down and lay on his back, looking at the quivering grass that bent forward as if to cover him. The clouds hung low, swollen into shifting shapes like huge white faces and ships and fish as big as the world, and he wondered how tall he would have to be before he could reach out and touch the sky with his fingers.

His father spread his smock on the ground, squatted on it, and began to re-assemble the gun. Kevin rolled over on his belly and leaned on his elbow to watch him. When he had finished, he sat back with the rifle across his knees and waited.

“There gonna be a deer come out here?” Kevin asked eagerly.

“Mebbe. Gotta wait and see.”