“Really, so you’d say you’ve got the Biblical true life now?”
“The way I see it, Sid, is the life I live now has me sleeping good at night. I feel free of guilt and pretty damn happy most of the time. I’m nowhere close to perfect so I gotta keep close watch, and make amends for my mistakes, but if this is true life, I’ll take it any day. I can’t explain why, but I’m really looking forward to helping out your uncle.”
There’s Jo, and here’s Jack, each of them following religious teachings, even though they aren’t really religious. For those with special ears that somehow hear.
###
They pull into Claresholm and turn off at Merv’s Gas. A few blocks from the highway, they park below a line of large black poplars growing around the low one-story buildings. Trees that don’t really belong on the southern prairies, like alcoholics don’t really belong in any normal crowd when they drink.
As they stroll into the cafeteria, a man waves one hand high, hanging on to a coffee cup with the other. Sid struggles to see family in the face. So many years, and so many stories hammered out on the Uncle Harry anvil, just don’t match the bright-eyed man who greets them now.
“Hey Sidney. Over here.”
“Uncle Harry?” As dim memories congeal, Sid vaguely picks out a trace or two of Mirchuk. “This is my friend Jack. He’s been sober a while.”
Uncle Harry pumps their hands, grinning. They walk out, and drive over to where the highway doubles as Main Street. The McNeil Restaurant, downtown Claresholm. Little posters all over the walls advertise the fare.
Over lively discussion they stuff themselves with the daily special. Then they wait for a coffee refill. “So now you know mine and Jack’s stories. You can tell us yours if you want, Uncle. What made you quit?”
The far off hurt look in Uncle Harry’s eyes mirrors Uncle Nick when he talked of his past. A hint of anger curls its lip and bars its teeth, like a canine recalling a boot. Harry holds silent for a moment as he looks first at Sid, then at Jack.
“OK, OK.” He speaks in a low voice. “Well I drive out of town that day just to get away. I have a half jug of Crown Royal in my one hand and my twelve gage pump in the other. And I’m not out duck hunting ‘cause it’s the middle of spring.” Harry’s face wrinkles into a smile of malicious sadness. “The damnedest thing, cause I know the whiskey isn’t gonna work, whatever I bring that for. So I’m standing there at the ravine wondering what the hell to do.”
Sid looks knowingly at Jack. Similarity weaves its common thread through so many drinker stories. For a moment his face flashes with so much anger, it looks like he might smash their table to splinters. But Uncle Harry takes a deep breath.
“So I throw the bottle up in the air and blow the damn thing to pieces. Then I pump the second shell into the chamber. There’s only one choice left.” He raises an eyebrow, looking at them intently, searching for some kind of understanding.
Jack and Sid listen attentively. The common fibre weaves on; they have their own stories, and know how another alcoholic often thinks; that he or she is absolutely the only one who ever had any such problem.
“I head down the ravine to the river. I want to get away from myself so bad …” Despair fills his eyes, his voice wavering between child and maniac. “I sit myself down under a tree. I put my thumb on the trigger and the barrel under my chin.” Sid looks at his uncle’s two-day facial scruff. “Screw everything. I decide right then I’m out of here … and then, goddamn that Dennis. I’m finally ready to end my crappy life, and he comes to mind. Damn him. I used to drink with the guy and he just up and quit one day. He told me about it too. So there I am, ready to check out, and all of a sudden my head’s full of everything he was saying.”
Harry stares at them in frustration.
“You’re still alive, Harry,” Jack observes calmly.
“Damn it. OK, I heave the shotgun off in the bush. I go back to town and call the guy. He meets me that day, and we talk and talk … and talk.” Uncle Harry’s voice is normal again. “He’s my sponsor now. He sent me here, and here I am.”
“Here you are, Uncle Harry.”
They finish their coffees. Harry heads off to the Men’s, and Sid looks at his friend as they pay the bill.
“He’s got potential,” says Jack.
“Yah, I hope so.” Sid knows it’s hard to judge what a fresh member might do. Harry might get right into focused recovery like a steady values fund, or he just might go back to hell like an equity in a slump. Choosing investments isn’t easy.
It’s a good meeting back at the centre – they all are of course. Wisdom from others’ experience. Harry promises to call Sid when he gets out the next week, and to take care of himself. Kind of a thin commitment from one with his history. Or any serious drinker’s. But yah, he’s got potential, like any listed stock.
###
The phone rings again a couple weeks later, and Sid isn’t quite so shocked. Harry’s in 1835, the half-way house for alcoholics getting out of treatment and back on their feet. His voice sounds even angrier than at McNeil’s but at least he hasn’t been drinking. He says OK to meeting Sid at Moon Bucks on 14th for coffee.
“Hey Uncle. How’s things?” Sid greets his uncle.
“Ahh, I’m getting by today, one hour at a time. How ‘bout you?”
“Today things are OK.” Then Sid sums up the wisdom he has heard spoken in meetings. “A lot of it’s because I choose for it to be OK.”
“Yah, well the truth is things just aren’t really that great at all, you know. This damn world is such a screwed up place. It’s just not fair.” Harry’s forced smile fades. “I guess I feel sorry for myself a lot, that’s what my counsellor tells me at 1835. We were talking about how I see a higher power.
It’s that goddamn church pissing me off today, all their shit. Those stupid priests back home. They had me as an altar boy; well altar boy my ass. I snuck into the church on Friday nights and drank all the wine, ‘cause I knew where it was. It’s the same stuff you buy at the liquor store; I saw the labels. What a crock of shit.”
“That was the Catholic Church, was it, the one in Debden?” Sid asks patiently.
“Yes.” His uncle hisses. “Goddamn St Mark’s. That’s where they had the funeral. Screw them, I just didn’t go. And now they talk about God in Claresholm. I just about puke.” His breathing runs rapid now. He pauses. “But I know, I know … it is God as I understand Him. Really, AA is a good thing. I could never get sober with religion, but these other guys and gals … well some of them have been through this religious wringer too. So I feel like I’m not the only one.” His breathing slows some as the rage slowly dissipates from his eyes.
“It’s true, life is tough. Not fair either.” Sid agrees, sipping his tea. “But if I let it be what it is, I can be OK. If I detach myself from the things I have no control over, my life can be a lot more peaceful.”
Uncle Harry’s look softens as he peers at his nephew.
“Yah, OK, well that’s what they say at the house. Accept the things I cannot change. Look on the bright side. So hey, you were telling me there was a Mirchuk reunion at the lake a few years back.”
“Yah, it was a great get together. I picked Uncle Nick up at the airport. He told me how you had that ’55 Chevy.”
Harry’s face contorts into a scrimmage on the battlefield, a happy grin standing off against a roar of anger. The grin wins the first skirmish.
“Yah that car. Man those were the good times,” he sighs and his grin spreads, then sours. “Then those damn guys with the speed boat came out that summer. Loli and Ksandra got hooked. They were out in that boat every day. Then they went with those guys to the city, to theatres and fancy restaurants, living the high life.
I can see why, I mean young country girls can get excited when they have what’s in the magazines come right to their doorstep. I know, I gotta accept – detach. But shit! It’s just not right.”
Harry’s face is back in the combat zone
. Sid watches burning swords of pain lance his disposition, splashing out anger in spurting streams, like blood. He sees it, because he has seen it in the mirror. It takes Sid a while to figure out what Uncle Harry is saying next. After a few choice words under his breath, he sighs.
“We searched for two days. Those speedboat guys were long gone, so we used old man Chichowski’s tub. We combed the whole lake. Back and forth. Even with a lantern in the night.” The spurting streams of anger turn into torrents of tears running down his cheeks. “We found her in the morning, third day looking, in her red party dress. Me and Nick. She was bloated; face down, washed up in the reeds. Damn. Damn. Damn.” Harry pounds his fist on the table, startling Sid and a few other coffee shop patrons. Some look over at their table, disturbed until they see the tears.
“That was Ksandra, Uncle?” Sid asks quietly.
“Yah, that was her. My beautiful teenage cousin. It was all my fault. I was twenty years old that summer. I should have done something. She didn’t have to die. And not like that. I don’t even know what happened. None of us did.”
Ryan’s old place, what Uncle Nick said … something more to it. Maybe Uncle Nick knows more than Uncle Harry. Or maybe their sister Lola knows all.
“Life is tough.” Sid nods. “Not easy, but I’ve learned to not blame myself for things in the past. I mean you weren’t there when she went for that swim. And you weren’t the only one involved. You just gotta get on with your own life. That’s what they tell me in the program. You know?”
Sid’s uncle looks at him through drying tears. He blows his nose on a Moon Bucks napkin, wipes his eyes on his sleeve and lifts a shaking hand to drink more coffee. The stuffed down sorrows of youth must have been packed deep. The kind alcoholics drink at, the ones crammed into a misery package of the past. A market influence bottlenecking the growth of spiritual stocks. But all stocks have growth potential.
“There was this woman in my treatment centre …”
Sid tells a story of his own in quieter tones. Late one evening in her classy urban home, she had slipped out to the garage, and while her family slept upstairs, she started up the car and just sat there, not bothering to open the door or go anywhere. If only Sid had called her … if only he had talked to her more. He felt so responsible at first. He had met her children, her husband at family week – her life looked so great from the outside – then the next time he saw them again was at the funeral. Why couldn’t he do something, yah, if only …
Uncle Harry, listening, has become more peaceful. Sid talks more about the reunion. All the brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces. He mentions the family tree, all of it but the branch under Uncle Harry’s name. Too raw of a moment.
“They were talking about another one. Would you come?”
“You damn rights I’ll be there.”
Sid hopes so.
Chapter 13
He digs into his wallet to pay Barney for some border gas, then shivering, rolls up the window quickly. Fuel prices are up, but that doesn’t bring his spirits down. Other value trade-offs are becoming his mainstay. Jamie’s invitation to an Easter bible-study session, specifically on being rich, has the little voice dancing. Uncle Harry has been sober for the better part of a year … maybe they’ll discuss the worth of a soul. Not only that, family rumour has it Uncle Nick talked with his sister Lola, and now he’s been talking to the other aunties … some insider information is circulating.
A strong wind blowing out of the northeast churns the cloudiness of a blustery spring day. The snow layer on the fields has been melting and freezing, cycling flushes of water into the soil. Dry weather gives the grasshoppers an edge; moisture holds them at the gate and gives extra advantage to the grain. Sid taps the heater fan down a notch, as the afternoon sun emerges in a blue spot.
It would nice to find a traveler for debate or story telling on the trip, but nary a hitchhiker looks for a ride today. Understandable this time of year; early spring just lacks the exuberance of a solid-hot summer day. Anyway, peace in solitude comes with the smooth flow of highway speed, even through Rosetown.
He drives past the airport into the city. Sid hopes to squeeze in a chat with Ryan before heading to Jamie’s. He’ll be over at Franco’s if he isn’t at home, he said. When Sid drives up the red brick lined alley, the car appears to be missing. He hops out, leaving the van running, rushing around to push 104. No answer. Back in the van to head across town to the businessman’s house.
Fine trimmed hedges line the driveway, only partly hiding a twin-hulled boat on a trailer. Sid looks over at the catamaran, recalling the Sahiya fishing trip four years ago; this is definitely a newer bigger boat. Tracks of ice trace down the driveway from second garage door to trailer, and he wonders if it would fit inside. Behind the boat, the motor home Jo mentioned sits parked in driveway number three, bigger than the camper trailer at the reunion. Another upwardly mobile move along the freeway.
He steps between ice patches on the sidewalk, up to ring the bronze doorbell; half imagining a servant might answer. But Franco graciously invites him to enter his home where a small purebred dog steps gingerly up to sniff at his leg.
“What kind of dog Franco?” He ruffles the ears of man’s best friend.
“She’s a Sealyham. A Terrier.” Franco nods as they pass through the thickly carpeted front room. “Susan and the kids took Yoli over to visit my mother-in-law. Ryan and I are just having a little chat about business in the kitchen.”
“Yoli? Do I know Yoli?” Sid looks at Franco as he leads them down the hall.
“Ryan’s fiancé.” Franco replies as they round a corner into a large open kitchen.
“Oh, no kidding? Yolita.” Sid raises an eyebrow Ryan’s way as he approaches.
Ryan rises from a bar stool at the dining table, grasping Sid’s hand. “Hey Sid. Yah, I should have told you on the phone, but I wasn’t sure. Yolita flew up here a couple days ago. Man, she doesn’t think much of the cold. You gotta come to the wedding.”
“Well, I’d be honoured, Ryan. Congratulations.” Sid hangs on even when Ryan would have let go, slapping his cousin on the back. Ryan still seems so different from the cousin he was at the reunion, but a troubled glint dims his eye.
Franco offers to barbeque Sid a steak. The two brothers sit with an after lunch Pilsner, their plates scattered on the table covered by T-bone remains. Sid accepts.
While Franco grabs a steak from the fridge, and steps out the back door to relight the barbeque, Ryan tells Sid the latest. He indeed returned to Costa Rica, this time to visit both his girlfriend as well as Uncle Nick.
“He’s getting fidgety. I think he’s gonna move again. Maybe back to Saskatchewan – where he belongs … maybe.” Ryan says.
“Wild.” To be expected of one with an inquisitive spirit, Sid thinks. “How about you? You gonna stay in that same place … same job?”
“I dunno. Franco tells me to get a new place and a new job. He thinks I should go into business. Then maybe I could buy a house like this one.” Ryan’s eyes don’t seem to match his smile.
Change appears to be sinking its teeth deeper into Ryan’s life. Marriage is a big step, especially across cultural boundaries. At least they both have fishing poles. Sid hopes the best for them, raising a silent word to his version of Creator. Maybe they’ll come to live like Franco and his family, shifting to the upper middle class.
Franco comes back through the door. “So I was just telling Ryan about some business propositions we have. He’s got to get himself organized. At least he’s not pissing it all away any more. Right brother?” Franco gives his ever-winning smile.
“Well, maybe I don’t piss it away. But I’m dunno about your business either, Franco. You gotta tell me more. Uncle Nick says I can make a living doing something that’s fun, something I enjoy, like casting a hook.”
“No one’s ever gonna pay you to go fishing. That’s weekend stuff. You have to think in a family way now. Like I said, I flew to LA and talked with Robe
rt again. He’s our cousin, just like Sid here, and they have connections in Latin America. So you fit in perfect for Central America. Yoli speaks Spanish, right? Our plan is to move home entertainment equipment up to Saskatoon from LA. Now that has some real possibilities. Latin America has a transport advantage over Asia and we have good value warehousing here. So with this new initiative happening, now’s the time to act. It’s always best to get in on the bottom floor.”
Ryan has been listening closely. “So what would I do?” He asks seriously.
“OK listen. Robert is willing to send us a container when we have it thirty percent invoiced. I’ll talk to dealers and get the orders signed. You have to stay on the phone, get to know everyone, make sure things run smooth. We have to keep customers happy, so all orders have to show up on time. It’ll work.” Franco flourishes his persuasive smile.
Ryan puffs out a cheek, silently considering.
“So you went to LA, Franco. Was Andrew there?” Sid jumps in on the silence. “Or did you talk to Auntie Lola at all?”
“Yes, Andrew was there. He’s a great guy. He introduced me to Robert the first time I went down. That was a few months after the reunion. We’ve been talking on the phone for a while now. Business problems, but things are smoothing out now. And they invited us in on a new initiative they’re setting up. And I did talk to Lola and John too. They’re doing really well.” Franco speaks smoothly as he tosses salad onto the plate.
“So you were at their place in Redondo Beach.” Sid says.
“I swung by to pick up Robert there. Nice place. Real nice. Aunt Lola invited me in for dinner, but unfortunately Robert had already made other arrangements. Really kind woman, our Aunt Lola.”
Sid struggles to sift out the truth.
“Did you talk to Andrew?” He digs.