Cadillac Cathedral (16 page)

“With a low tire?’ said the man on the stool. “You didn’t know any better’n that?”

“There wasn’t a low tire when I parked in front of that motel.”

“Well, there was by the time Uncle Ernie hauled it here. Lucky we’ve got a patching kit is all I can say, or the funeral parade would’ve been spoiled.”

“Ummmm,” Jeremy said. “I’m afraid this gentleman might not be able to wait around for the funeral.”

“The hell you say!” The man with the patching kit threw the inner tube on the concrete floor. “We promised Grandpa a ride and nobody’s gonna spoil it for him!”

“Easy, Ryan,” Jeremy said. “We can talk about this.”

“Talk with who?” Arvo said. “I don’t have the time to stand around and talk. I need to get back out to the highway. This little detour wasn’t a part of my plan.”

In fact even the detour
before
this detour had not been part of his plan.

“Well,” said the young man named Ryan, “as soon as Grandpa Enright saw this hearse it was definitely part of
his
plan, so what are you going to do about it?”

Silence followed this. Ryan glared at Arvo. Arvo did not look away.

“I’m afraid Ryan is right,” Jeremy said. “It will be a terrible disappointment to our grandfather.”

It seemed to Arvo that since Grandpa Enright would probably be dead for his funeral procession, it shouldn’t matter much if the plan was cancelled — so long as he still believed he was going to be riding in this hearse. But when he voiced this aloud, even Jeremy was quick to reject the notion. “We don’t lie to Grandpa. Never have. We made a promise and we’ll have to stick with it.”

Arvo turned to Sandy Macgregor. “How far is the highway from here?”

“Half hour or less,” Macgregor said. “Well, maybe three-quarters in
that
.”

Arvo hauled in a long deep breath and held it, unwilling to believe what he was about to say. It seemed the only way out of this mess, short of calling the police. And he was not anxious to drag the cops into this. If police got involved, the Enrights would not be the only ones with awkward questions to answer.

“If Grandpa Enright would get so much pleasure out of riding in this hearse while he’s dead,” Arvo said, “wouldn’t he get even more pleasure out of it while he’s alive?”

Jeremy Enright narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“Go ask him. Which would he choose — a short ride in this old hearse today while he can enjoy it, or just imagine riding in it when he’s dead and may not get so much pleasure out of it. My guess is, one ride around the four sides of that hayfield down there ought to make him happy.”

“If it doesn’t kill him,” Ryan Enright said.

Arvo showed his open palms as though to say “And if it does …?”

The Enrights glanced at one another.

Jeremy smiled. “I could hold him on my lap, I guess. Sitting up front. There’s no weight to him any more.”

“Unless he’d rather ride in the coffin,” Ryan said. “Lid open, of course. I’ll have this tire back together in just a couple minutes. Someone go ask Grandpa what he thinks. Wake him up if you have to.”

CHAPTER 10

AS HE DROVE AWAY
from the Enright farm, Arvo hoped never to forget the look of surprise and joy on the old man’s face when the hearse was driven up close enough for him to recognize what it was and even, maybe, to admire its beauty. The noises he made were barely more than squeaks but his family seemed to understand they were squeaks of pleasure. The man may have been 99 percent gone from this world, but there was still enough of him here to anticipate, with something like pleasure, the chance to ride the circumference of his hayfield in a beautiful vintage hearse. The men of his family had agreed that the old fellow ought to have his ride up front on Jeremy’s lap rather than behind windows in the back.

Herbie had refused to watch while Arvo gave the old man his brief tour, but sat on his heels with his back against the wall of the tractor shed. “Leave me alone,” he said. “I hate all this stuff about dying.”

Several of the women had raised objections. Daughters and daughters-in-law and generations of granddaughters were horrified by what was about to happen. They insisted that subjecting the old man to a ride over the uneven surface of that hayfield would result in a sort of murder. No matter that he would have been happy in his final moments, no matter that he was already well over a hundred years old and so weak that he wasn’t likely to last more than another day or so. One especially heavy woman dropped to sit on the ground in front of the hearse with her arms crossed and her eyes daring Arvo to inch the vehicle forward. “You’ll have to run over me first.”

The others did not immediately put their lives on the line, but eventually one young woman said “What the hell,” and stepped over to stand behind her sitting relative with her arms defiantly folded and her eyes narrowed as a sort of silent dare.

Jeremy Enright must have recognized the impossibility of defying this opposition. He suggested that the old man’s journey be restricted to the slowest possible speed while travelling only a few times around this hard-packed dirt yard directly in front of the old farmhouse.

The women agreed, but only if Jeremy sat holding Grandpa Enright on the front seat of the hearse so that he could get the general idea without being subjected to much of an actual ride. As soon as Arvo had set the hearse in motion at even less than funereal speed, the women fell in behind, forming a column that followed the hearse slowly across the front yard and around the oak tree, singing “Good Bye Old Timer” — which was, if Arvo remembered correctly, a poem about the death of a logger. Maybe the old fellow had worked in the
woods at some point. At least it wasn’t “Shall We Gather at the Bloody River.”

They sang as they passed by the front steps to the farmhouse, and then around behind the house and past an unpainted, tilted, and probably no-longer-used privy, and eventually shifted their singing to “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal” as they passed through the open doorway to the empty tractor shed, sending chickens squawking and flapping their wings to get out of their way, then passed out the far end of the shed into sunshine again, the women still singing in unison “Souls have crossed before me, saintly / To that land of perfect rest; / And I hear them singing faintly / In the mansions of the blest.”

Though the old man had fallen asleep in Jeremy’s arms before his short ride was over, his family members seemed to be altogether pleased with themselves. A number of cameras had recorded the journey. The impromptu choir of women fell apart, laughing, then threw themselves into the arms of their grinning men.

Did being surrounded by so many relatives make this final stage in life any easier? The old guy couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic group of proud admirers taking care of him. Arvo had been an only child without so much as a cousin or a nephew or any family other than his parents in this part of the continent. His first visit to Helsinki had uncovered only one living relative — a very old bachelor living alone in a two-room apartment. Asked if he’d ever married, the old man had thought for a long time before recalling a girl he’d wanted to marry, but he could not remember whether he’d got around to doing it. Only when Arvo was about to leave did he recall that the girl had moved with her family to Denmark.

“You didn’t go after her?”

The old man had looked confused. “I suppose I mustn’t have.”

A person had to wonder if this sort of reluctance or procrastination
or plain old-fashioned shyness was built into the family genes.

Now that Arvo was back on the rough oil-and-gravel road, heading at last for the highway, there was the question of how to tell the others — especially Peterson — that Herbie had flat-out refused to go any farther, and that any attempt to talk some sense into him had failed. Herbie would stay in Sandy Macgregor’s run-down motel and Arvo had had no choice but to leave him behind to live in a room so small his belongings would have to be kept in cardboard boxes stacked against the walls.

How long could they allow him to live on a road with little in either direction except bush, isolated patches of industry, a few deserted houses, and a row of storage lockers? At least Portuguese Creek had the General Store where Herbie could buy a newspaper and a carton of milk to take home for his porridge. Portuguese Creek also had Peterson, who’d been someone for Herbie to talk to across the table, someone for Herbie to help with a few outside chores and a little housework. And there was Arvo’s workshop nearby, where Herbie was always welcome to drop by for an hour or so of talk.

Of course they mustn’t allow Herbie to stay away for good, but if Peterson got back together with Lucy and if Herbie refused to live with them again, it was impossible to imagine who might be persuaded to take him in.

Poor Herbie had been so shy when he’d come to live with Peterson — turned inward, mostly silent, unwilling or unable to meet your eyes as though he was ashamed of being himself. He was already somewhere in early middle-age at the time, but he reminded you of a child that had been beaten so often he believed he deserved the punishment and expected you to start beating him too. According to Peterson, the good-hearted old aunt had tried to train him away from his shame, but had not entirely succeeded. Just having Herbie
around could make you feel you ought to be apologizing for something. Of course Peterson, who had never been inclined to apologize for anything, treated Herbie just the same as he treated any other inconvenient irritation and Herbie seemed to believe that this was what he deserved.

He supposed there were some who thought the natural place for Herbie was one of those group homes, with supervision. There were a couple of those in town. It was also possible they thought the natural place for Herbie was Arvo’s house across from the Store. One man with a whole house to himself! If he was determined not to take a wife — and they must believe it was far too late for that now — the least he could do was take in a boarder, especially a boarder who was a friend and already a regular visitor to his workshop.

He could already hear them: “Saves old abandoned cars but doesn’t lift a finger for an old abandoned friend.”

The thought of taking someone into his house called up images of that woman from Thunder Bay who’d stepped down off the bus with her teenaged son and made his life a living hell.

He’d been a fool to let Herbie talk him into leaving the highway. Aside from leading you away from the most direct path to your destination, a detour was also a reminder that there was no end of ways in which life could keep you from even
reaching
your destination.

He supposed that to some people his whole life looked like a series of detours. Avoiding something, he imagined they’d say, though to him it seemed that it was the world and the people in it that kept throwing him off track — starting as far back as having to quit vocational school, maybe sooner.

Just as one detour could lead to another, one worry could lead to another worry. He could reach the city only to discover that Myrtle Birdsong had recently set off with a wealthy widower on a honeymoon
cruise through the Caribbean. And of course, even before he reached the city he could be stopped by the police, the hearse confiscated, and himself charged with theft, or at least mischief, and subjected to some time in custody before being set free to find his own way home.

Because there were so many things a person could worry about while off the beaten path, the red
STOP
sign at the highway came as a welcome surprise. So did the traffic whizzing past. Even the sprawling car dealerships at the four corners of the intersection were a relief. Rows and rows of cars and trucks of every colour glittered in the sun. Banners flapped cheerfully from poles, as though to greet him. Giant signs promised bargains and incredible trade-in deals.

It was hard to believe there were enough drivers living within reach of this highway to justify so much gleaming inventory. He was aware that for every new automobile sold from these lots an older one would be traded in and then later bought by someone else whose even older car would be crushed down and sent away for scrap — or, possibly in a very few cases, hauled up into the mountains and abandoned where the salal and Oregon grape and blackberry vines would eventually try to bury it.

Amongst these shiny new cars, sales people turned away from their customers to watch the Cathedral hearse approach. No doubt they were thinking that automobiles this beautiful were not being made any more, certainly not by the companies
they
represented. They must hope he was about to turn in with the intention of trading this vehicle for a brand new
BMW
.

Relieved to be leaving the detour behind, Arvo raised a hand to acknowledge their admiration. Several men saluted. A woman in a red jacket presented both upright thumbs.

“Brace yourself, Herbie,” Arvo said, though Herbie was not here
to heed his advice. “We’re about to risk everything by driving into a small town that exists for no other reason than to strip visitors of every dollar they’ve got before sending them home to Oregon or Alberta. When they see us, they won’t see a hearse with an old fart behind the wheel, they’ll just see a traveller with money burning holes in his pockets.