As a kid Hosea Funk would say, “okay … okay … okay …” before leaving the house to walk to school, just sorting it out in his head and coming to terms with it. In the playground and at the skating rink he was very cautious. He would creep around
the rink clinging to the boards, not caring what the other boys and girls thought. He was keeping himself alive, saving himself for something big. He wanted to make sure he was okay down the road because he knew he had things to do. And because he was all that his mother had.
Hosea Funk was born in the middle of a heat wave on June
11
,
1943
, in a machinery shed belonging to his mother’s parents. The shed was long gone by now and in its place was a large rectangular-shaped patch of dead grass, discoloured and flattened and strewn with rocks and scraps of metal. Euphemia was eighteen years old when Hosea was born and sure her father would kill her, quite literally, if he found out she had had a baby. Getting pregnant in September was a lucky thing for her because all winter she was able to hide her body away in big coats and sweaters. But it was a good thing that Hosea was born when he was because if she’d had to have worn that huge woollen coat a day longer in that heat wave, she would have died for sure. As it was, her parents were so concerned about her health, thinking she must be very ill to need so many clothes in that heat, that they forbade her to leave the house and had a neighbour or a relative watching her just about every minute of the day. Getting to the machine shed to have her baby had not been easy.
Euphemia had had nothing to prepare her for Hosea’s birth. Well, almost nothing. Once, as a girl, she had wandered into the barn where her father was helping a mare give birth to her foal. Just about his entire right arm was stuck inside the horse. His left arm he used to brace himself against the horse’s buttocks. The mare was kicking him and screeching and her father was purple in the face, cursing the horse and the reluctant foal. Euphemia stood and stared in horror. Would it be possible to stick her own arm inside herself and pull the baby out? There was nobody else to help her, after all. Hadn’t some of her father’s mares given birth without any help? And hadn’t she heard her
friends talking about walking out to the field and finding a new calf or piglet or whatever happily sucking milk from its mother and nobody had even known the cow or the sow was pregnant? So, it could be done, Euphemia thought.
Euphemia lay in her bed, in the heat, in her sweaters and coats. She stared at the dark wood and flowered wallpaper of her bedroom. She could smell chicken noodle soup. She could hear her brothers hollering in the yard and things clanking. Her sisters had gone to town and her mother was rummaging around downstairs. Things were as they usually were and it all would have been comforting except for the sticky circle of blood staining Euphemia’s cotton underwear. That evening she went into labour.
The pain had started after supper. By now Euphemia’s meals were being brought to her in bed, to save her strength. How long would this mysterious fever last, anyway? her parents wondered. They asked her if she thought she might be feeling better and if perhaps she could join them at the supper table. But she said no, if anything she was feeling worse and really needed to be alone. One after another, her brothers and sisters came to her room and left again, shrugging their shoulders, going back to their business.
By nine o’clock the pain was almost unbearable. Euphemia’s lower back, pelvis, stomach, and uterus together had turned into a rigid two-thousand-pound stick of dynamite going off at first intermittently and then continuously. Iron cannonballs were rocketing around inside her body, pounding and bashing, desperate for a way out. If anything, the dull warning pain that preceded each explosion terrified Euphemia the most. She whimpered and moaned. She dug her fingernails into her thighs and almost passed out holding her breath. She cried and prayed to God to help her survive. Beside her, in another twin bed, lay her younger sister, Minty, still asleep, but
tossing and turning a bit more with each of Euphemia’s muffled moans. Euphemia knew that somehow she had to get out of the house.
By this time it was ten-thirty. Her parents and her other brothers and sisters would be in bed, if not asleep, and if she was stealthy enough she could creep down the hall, down the stairs, and out the back door. If she had time she could make it to the machinery shed.
Euphemia managed to get out of her bed and tiptoe to the door, hunched over, in agony, in tears, but on her way. Just as she crossed the threshold, her little sister woke up. “Phemie?”
“Minty,” said Euphemia, “I’m going to the john, go back to sleep. I’m coming right back.”
But Minty said, “Wait, Phemie, take me with you. I gotta go, too.”
Oh God, thought Euphemia. If she said no, Minty would start to cry and wake up her mother and her life would be over. But she couldn’t bring her with her. Of course not. Euphemia clutched the door frame, trying not to cry. “Listen, Minty, if you promise to go back to sleep right now, tomorrow morning I will give you the best present in the whole wide world. Okay?”
Minty stared at Euphemia and asked excitedly, “What is it, what is it, Phemie?”
Euphemia put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, Minty, it’s the best thing in the world, I told you, but I can’t bring it to you until you go to sleep. Please, Minty?”
“You promise?” said Minty. “Yes, Minty, yes, I promise.”
Euphemia made it out of the house. In the darkness she stumbled and lurched, cupping her belly with one hand, in an attempt to keep the baby in, until she could make it to the machine shed, to the little bundle of hay she had tossed in one corner months ago, before being confined to her bedroom.
The effort of opening the heavy shed door helped to break her water. Inside the shed, Euphemia ripped off her coat, her two sweaters, her wet woollen leotards, and stained cotton underwear and sank to the floor, naked, on her hands and knees. It was pitch-black inside the shed. Euphemia, her face twisted sideways on the cement floor, screamed into the darkness, and Hosea Funk was born.
W
hen Knute and Summer Feelin’ drove up to the house they could see Tom and Dory standing in the living room, staring out the picture window. Next to them were small bronze statues and clay busts that Tom had bought, and he and Dory seemed to blend in with these things. As soon as they saw Knute’s beater pull up in the driveway, though, they came to life. Dory zipped to the front door and Tom smiled and waved. These days he stayed away from the doors when they were being opened. He couldn’t afford to get a chill and get sick all over again. S.F. ran up to the picture window, flapping like crazy, and Tom gave her a high-five against the glass, smudging it up a bit. Dory came running out of the house saying, “Welcome, welcome, oh I’m sooooo glad you’re both here.” And she scooped up S.F. even though her heart wasn’t in much better shape than Tom’s and then, with her other free arm, wrapped herself around Knute. Tom beamed through the glass.
Dory had prepared a large meal. It consisted of boneless chicken breasts with a black bean sauce, steamed broccoli, slices of cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots, brown rice, and a fruit salad. Knute could just barely pick out the grimace on Tom’s face when he sat down at the table, rather ashamed and annoyed that all this dull stuff constituted a celebratory meal.
And that it was all made especially for him and his fragile heart. He would have preferred a big piece of red meat with lots of salt, some potatoes and thick gravy, cheese sauce to accompany his steamed broccoli, great slabs of bread with real butter to soak up the gravy and juice from the meat, a large wedge of apple pie and ice cream, and four cups of coffee to wash it down.
But, of course, Tom couldn’t eat steak every day, or maybe he could have and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Who knows? Anyway, Knute could tell that Dory felt very good about herself when she prepared the chicken and steamed vegetables, and the fact that they had hardly any taste made S.F., at least, happy.
After lunch Tom did a bit of walking up and down the hall, S.F. went down to the basement to play with the toys, and Dory and Knute had a cryptic conversation about Tom.
“So?” said Knute, and jerked her head in the direction of Tom and the hallway.
“Well,” said Dory, “you know …”
“Mmmmm …”
And then Dory said, “One day at a time …” and Knute nodded and said, “Yup …”
They sat there and stared at their coffee cups for a bit and Dory added in a very hushed tone, “A bit more,” she tapped at her chest, “these days.”
Knute tapped her own chest. “Pain?” she asked.
Dory nodded and pursed her lips.
“Hmmm … well, what does the doctor say?”
“OH TOM, YOU’RE DONE?” Tom had finished his walk and Dory had been timing him. He had walked for eight minutes. Dory was trying to be extremely upbeat about the eight minutes. “Well, Tom, yesterday it was only seven,” and that sort of thing. Tom went over to the picture window and stood with
his back to Dory and Knute. He punched his fist into his palm once and then after about thirty seconds he did it again. He slowly walked back to the couch and lay down with a heavy sigh.
After supper (of leftovers), Dory and Knute played Scrabble. For weeks Dory had been playing with “Marie,” a phantom Scrabble opponent whom she had given her own middle name to. Knute asked Dory how she felt when “Marie” won, and she said, “Divided.” Summer Feelin’ had wandered over to the neighbours’ house to play with the little girl, Madison, who lived there. Dory could never remember Madison’s name. “Montana?” she’d say. “Manhattan?” Which got them onto the subject of names, and Dory wondered if Knute had, perhaps, considered calling S.F. just “Summer” instead of “Summer Feelin’”? Knute knew Dory wasn’t altogether enthusiastic about her granddaughter’s name and she told her she’d think about it, although she wondered if Dory was really any authority on girls’ names considering the choice she’d made when her own daughter was born.
“Summer,” Dory said over and over. “If you say it enough times, you know, Knutie, you
get
that summer feeling. You don’t have to actually
say
it. The Feelin’ part becomes rather redundant, don’t you think? Or maybe you could change the spelling of Feelin’ to something, oh, I don’t know, Irish, maybe, like Phaelan, or …”
Just then the doorbell rang. Tom woke up from his nap on the couch and Dory answered the door. A large man with a pale yellow golf cap tugged twice at the front of his coat before greeting Dory and stepping inside.
Tom was the first to speak. “Hosea Funk, c’mon in, c’mon in.” And he nodded his head once, in the traditional male greeting, got up from the couch, and stood there in his polo pajamas
looking a bit like William Shatner in the
Enterprise
and smoothed down his hair, which had become mussed from lying down. Dory said she’d make a fresh pot of coffee and told Hosea to have a seat.
“Hose, do you remember our Knutie?” Dory asked him, putting her arm around Knute’s shoulder and grinning. Hosea’s thumb and index finger went for the front of his shirt, but then, through some act of will on his part, he adjusted his golf hat instead and replied, “Why sure, Dory, I remember Knutie.” Everybody smiled and nodded and finally Hosea broke the awkward silence. “So, are you here for a visit, Knutie, or …”
Knute was just about to answer when Dory said, “No, she and Summer Feelin’ have moved back, for the time being.”
“Oh, well,” said Hosea, “that’s great! Welcome back to Algren.”
“Tha—” Knute was cut off by Hosea, who had suddenly sprung to life. “You still barrel-racin’, Knute?”
Barrel-racing! thought Knute. The one time she had barrel-raced, badly, was in a
4
-H rodeo and Hosea Funk had happened to be her timer. That was years ago, before he became the mayor. Back then he got involved in every event in town. If there was a parade, Hosea walked along throwing out candy to the kids. If there was a flood, Hosea organized a sandbag crew. If the hockey team made it to the playoffs in the city, Hosea offered to drive. Once, at a fall supper in a church basement, he was given a trophy by the main street businesses and it said, Hosea Funk, Algren’s Number One Booster.
“Nah, I’ve given it up,” said Knute. And she kind of buckled her knees to look bowlegged and horsey. Hosea Funk nodded and Knute could tell he was thinking of something else to say. She waited. A few seconds more. There. This time he couldn’t help it. His fingers went to his shirt and tugged, not twice but three times. He was ready to speak.
“But that palomino could turn on a dime, couldn’t he? He was something else. Now whose was he? Art Lemke, that’s right, he was Art’s. Wasn’t he, Tom? You know the one I’m talking about? The palomino?”
“Yup, yup, I think you’re right, Hose. Wait a minute, no, yeah, he would have had to have been Art’s. Well … hang on, I’m trying to remember. Nope, he would have been Lenny’s. Remember, Hose? Art sold the palomino to Lenny after his accident and Lenny couldn’t keep the palomino from jumping the fence and hightailing it back to Art’s barn. If I remember correctly … it’s hard to say. I don’t recall how it all turned out exactly, but I do know that horse loved Art all right. Never really took to Lenny …”
Hosea leaned back in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, his palms pushed against each other as if in prayer, his fingertips against puckered lips. He and Tom pondered the palomino while Dory and Knute slipped away into the kitchen to make the coffee.
Hosea and Tom were friends, in a way. Not like in the old days, when they were boys, but in the kind of way that you are in a small town with another man your age who has never done anything, really, to make you hate him or love him. They might as well be friendly, although Hosea visited Tom’s house more often than Tom visited his. And, since his heart attack, Tom didn’t go anywhere except to his doctor’s appointments and those visits exhausted him.
Tom had been a veterinarian and knew about animals and that might have been one of the reasons Hosea brought up the subject of the palomino. Hosea might have felt inferior to Tom, being a professional, having a wife and a daughter and even a granddaughter, but Tom didn’t think enough about Hosea to feel much of anything towards him other than a simple affection and a certain type of sympathy and from time to time,
especially these days, a pang of nostalgia when he remembered himself and Hosea as boys. During all those years while Tom was busy working as a vet and living with Dory and Knute, and while Hosea was living with his mother and looking after just about everything in Algren, their paths had kind of veered away from each other.