The Carpenter (16 page)

Speedy had appeared in the vestibule, carrying a refilled glass of beer.

—Lee, come on. Let’s go back inside and run us down a couple chicks.

He reached out to take Lee by the sleeve. Lee shoved him hard against the wall. The doorman turned to see and the kids went wide-eyed.

—Speedy, you dumb motherfucker.

—Lee …

Lee moved past the doorman. The kids made way for him and he hustled down the front steps. He didn’t know if Speedy was
following him or not but he went quickly across the big parking lot. Some distance away, the lights of a rig were moving onto the pavement from the highway. A row of overnighted tractor-trailers stood like dormant beasts. Lee turned and Speedy had not come out of the roadhouse. The neon sign above was crude against the night sky.

All that was past the trucks was a store with sundries and a counter of day-old doughnuts. Lee bought a cup of coffee and went back out. He made his way back up the highway, putting his thumb out whenever headlights appeared behind him, and about half a mile along, a man in a Buick stopped. The man said he didn’t mind giving a fella a lift, but that he had a twelve-inch length of iron pipe under his seat, if Lee was the kind of person who didn’t have the right idea of how far charity extends.

Even after Lee was back in town, he didn’t uncoil. The windows at the Owl Café were dark. He went to the Corner Pocket and got a table and played a couple of games by himself. He’d been there about forty-five minutes when he put his cue down and went over to the counter and asked for a Coke. The barman popped open a can and filled up a glass for him.

—Good to have you back again, said the barman.

—Yeah.

A man came up and returned a rack of balls, paid off his table. Lee drank the Coke and set the glass down.

—Another?

—Yes.

The barman popped open the can. Lee pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead. His eyes were pulsing again. The glass was just half full when Lee told the barman to stop pouring. The barman looked at him.

—I was thinking, said Lee. Maybe you could put a couple splashes of rye in there?

Halloween came a week later, falling on a Friday. From street light to street light went the children in their costumes, carrying shopping bags full of take. Lee and Helen went to the liquor store and filled out a selection card and came out with a couple of bottles of whisky. Lee felt like a big man. He’d spent a few days fretting over Speedy and their trip to the roadhouse, but by the same token he was pleased with himself. Anybody who said he couldn’t go straight, well, they could fuck off, now more than ever.

He and Helen walked along Princess Street. They passed one of the bottles between them, whisky mixed with cola, hidden inside a paper bag. Lee took a swig. If he could stand his ground with some serious men like Speedy’s friends, then he didn’t think he’d have any problem handling a drink a two. He felt like he was actually in control of what was happening around him, what was happening to him. And he was proud of that.

Three kids in monster costumes went running past them. When Lee himself was a little kid, he’d dressed for Halloween as the Lone Ranger, year after year. A mask and a gun, which, thinking on it now, made him laugh. He’d been out to Barry and Donna’s house for supper the night before, and Barry had told him that he and Donna weren’t letting Luke and John go trick-or-treating for Halloween, because they didn’t think a festival celebrating the devil was something you wanted to have your kids take part in. Instead, they were going to a sleepover at Galilee Tabernacle, where each child came dressed as a biblical character and there was a contest for the best costume. Pete, who was also there for supper, suggested that the boys go to the sleepover dressed as Cain and Abel, with Abel murdered and the Mark of God on Cain’s forehead. Lee laughed, but Barry just changed the subject.

Lee and Helen made their way back to Lee’s place. She made popcorn on the hot plate and he mixed them some drinks and they watched a Hitchcock film—
The Birds
—on his TV. As they
sat together, he looked at her from time to time, wondering what she’d been like as a young child.

Monday came and Lee was swinging his hammer. He was destroying the kitchen in a solitary island residence on Lake Kissinaw. The cupboards and counters were to be torn out. The bathrooms would go next. They would rip up the floor tiles and carpeting. The building and the island had sold for $60,000 to a man named Forsythe and his wife, who were said to live in New York State for most of the year. Clifton had gotten the bid for the renovations they wanted. Lee swung his hammer, caught the edge of a shelf, tore it out. A few feet away, Bud was working a crowbar on the kitchen counter.

At seven-thirty that morning they’d left in Clifton’s barge from the public landing. Clifton called his watercraft a barge but it wasn’t much of one. It was a dented twenty-foot steel push-boat with a flat bottom. The drop-gate in the bow didn’t work properly and was welded shut. It took them half an hour to cross the lake. Salvaged planks had been retrofitted in the barge as seats, and it was Lee, Bud and a man Lee hadn’t met yet riding along. Clifton helmed the barge, which plodded along, weighed down with lumber, a covered stack of pine, and a portable Monarch cement mixer. Lee didn’t want the others to take notice of how he was hunched forward with his fists pursed together. Moving over open water was chilling him to the bone. A T-shirt and work-shirt underneath his jean jacket were not going to be enough against the weather much longer. He craved a cigarette.

The barge tracked along a narrow hogback and then hooked into a calm back bay. The biggest island in the bay was sixty yards end to end, covered by white pines. The side of a boathouse was visible where the island tapered down to a rocky shore. Clifton guided them to a dock. On the shore, a material delivery had preceded them by a day or two: a couple of yards of gravel and three tons of Sakrete dry cement mix in forty-pound bags. Once they were tied up, Lee hopped out and got the blood moving
in his limbs. He lit himself a cigarette and offered one to Bud, who shook his head and hustled past him onto dry land. Clifton mugged at Lee but didn’t say anything. A short path led past the boathouse to the cottage that Forsythe had purchased. It was a dejected storey-and-a-half structure, once whitewashed. A deck attached to the side of the house was severely out of level.

Clifton looked at Lee, striding along the path beside him. He said: Forsythe’s wife said she dreamed about this place. What do you make of that, mister man?

—Long as it keeps us going through the winter, boss, anybody can dream anything they want.

Lee didn’t know why Clifton was asking for his judgment. And the man was roused, more than usual. It wasn’t half past eight before Clifton invoked words of God and idleness and loosed Bud and Lee on the kitchen.

The new man who’d come out with them was named Wally. After one of the counters had been torn free of the kitchen wall, Wally appeared with a tape measure to take some measurements. He jotted numbers down on the exposed wallboard where the counter had been. Then he left the kitchen, taking Bud with him. Ten minutes later they came back from the barge with a table saw. Lee saw them setting it up in the living room.

At lunchtime they sat around the fireplace. The flue whistled and moaned.

—So you’re a cabinetmaker? said Lee.

—That’s right, said Wally.

—Lee’s a carpenter too, said Bud. He got his trade. He could do up some beauty cabinets. For sure.

—Hot dog, said Wally. Where did you apprentice?

They were looking at Lee.

—Go on, Leland King, said Clifton. You shouldn’t hide nothing.

—Say, never mind, said Wally.

—Prison, said Lee.

—Oh.

—That’s where I got my trade. Anyhow.

—Tell me what you think, said Wally.

He handed Lee a manila file folder. Inside was a set of plans for the kitchen. The cabinetry was all to be face-framed and constructed from the pine they’d brought.

—It looks good, said Lee. What do they call it … modern.

—If they stain the pine right it will come up nice.

—Sure it will, said Lee.

—Not quite like whacking together some desks, said Clifton.

—I guess not.

—Lee has come a real long way, Wally. Words and deeds and prayer, every day. Right, Lee?

—Every day, said Lee.

—We might even see you at Galilee Pentecostal one of these days, said Clifton. You too, Bud. Even you, Wally.

Wally took the plans back from Lee. He said: My wife and I like the United Church just fine, thanks.

Clifton was getting into it. His posture was erect: The United Church, that’s where—

—Clifton, said Wally, I’m thinking about something my dad used to say. All things in moderation. Religion too. You go all you want to your church and I’ll go to mine. In the meantime we’ll talk about hockey.

Wally stood up to stretch. He took a few strides across the living room floor and went outside through the kitchen door.

Clifton shook his head.

—A lot of guys just don’t want to hear the truth.

By mid-week, a great deal of scrap material had been culled out of the house. They cast the fibreboard and wiring and pipes into a midden they had dug on the back of the island. All the scrap lumber was brought down to a rocky flat along the shore. They primed the scrap with gasoline and set it alight. Bud tended the
fire. He poked it with a shovel and hopped around like some kind of one-man pagan ceremony. Lee remained in the house, either helping Wally feed pine through the table saw or keeping the sawdust swept up and the tools organized. His own tool belt stayed folded neatly in a corner where he could keep an eye on it. Even Clifton was working. He was in the bathroom, putting solder on the new copper pipes.

At the end of each day when the light was fading, they took their things down and stood with Bud on the point. The coal bed gave off tremendous heat and the idea of barging out across the cold lake was a dismal prospect. Maybe even Clifton thought so, because they would stand around for awhile, instead of leaving. Nobody said anything. They just watched the red patterns shifting in the coals.

When Saturday came, Lee had a late breakfast at the Owl Café. Helen said she was going to be doing a tarot reading with some girlfriends that night but could see him the next day. If he wanted, of course. Lee walked breakfast off by going to the Woolworths around the corner from the National Trust. He tried on a Carhartt jacket. It was stiff denim lined with quilted flannel and it was so warm that it brought sweat out of his skin as he looked at himself in the store mirror. He moved the zipper up and down. He looked at the price tag and looked away, and then he carried the jacket and a wool toque and a pair of lined work gloves up to the cashier.

Your jacket, said Irene. It looks sharp. Don’t you think, Barry?

—It looks warm, Brother Lee.

They were at the hospital Saturday afternoon. The cancer ward was small and smelled new. They sat in a waiting area not far from the radiotherapy suite, Lee and Barry and Irene, and
despite how warm the new jacket was making him, Lee was somehow reluctant to remove it. He was getting the feel of it on his body.

A nurse came and told Irene they were ready to see her. The nurse helped her to stand up. Lee stood with her, holding her by the arm. The nurse gave him a bland smile.

—No worries, said Barry. These gals know what they’re doing.

Lee lowered himself into his chair: I’ll be here, Ma.

The nurse showed Irene out of the waiting area. Barry watched them go and then turned to Lee.

—I arranged a little time with her doctor if you want to meet him.

The oncologist was a small brown man whom Barry introduced as Dr. Vijay. His manner was prim and dignified and he did not shake hands. He offered them seats in his office.

—You are Mrs. King’s son?

—That’s right, said Lee.

—Thanks for seeing us on a Saturday, said Barry.

Dr. Vijay lifted his hand in the air and moved it side to side. He was looking at notes on a clipboard.

—Since the ward opened there are three thousand people in this region who come here for care. So I do not have much in the way of a weekend. But I am happy, Mr. King, to tell you a few words about your mother’s illness. Carcinoma, do you know this?

—Lung cancer, said Lee. Same as that one-legged kid who tried to run across the country.

—That one-legged kid, as you say, said Dr. Vijay, he suffers from osteosarcoma. A cancer that has spread from his leg to different parts of his body, including his lungs. What your mother has, Mr. King, is carcinoma. A cancer that has formed directly in her lungs. Your mother was a heavy smoker, yes?

—She smoked. Same as anybody else.

—The tumours in her lungs are almost certainly a result of heavy smoking. I am not making any recommendations to you,
Mr. King, but you might want to give that some thought if you are also a smoker.

Lee was unsure how to respond. He looked to Barry for any sign of comradeship but Barry had his plain face on. Lee shifted his jaw. Dr. Vijay flipped a page on the clipboard.

—As it is, your mother’s treatment seems to be progressing as well as can be expected. The third stage of the sickness, which she was diagnosed with in August, did your family explain this to you?

—They said she has a year to live, said Lee.

—Yes, that’s the estimate. I don’t want to give you any false hope. Still, she is responding well to the radiotherapy.

—She’s got this faith, said Barry abruptly. She knows Whose Hands she’s in.

—Yes, said Dr. Vijay, and he cleared his throat.

Faith was a funny thing for Lee. He’d been told how faith was shaped and what it looked like and how he could resolve himself to it. One time the prison chaplain drew from Revelations, how when a child of God walks away from the Lord, the Lord will yet reach to call him home. The chaplain said how when the call came it was faith by which it was heard. How faith was like a telephone. Lee had heard how the call was to come into your heart and thus deliver you.