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Authors: Margaret Laurence

The Fire-Dwellers (18 page)

BOOK: The Fire-Dwellers
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  — Here we go again.

No I don’t see

Well it’s simple but if you don’t see it you don’t see it. Here we are, kid.

Buckle pulls in and halts beside a warehouse. Men who have been expecting this arrival now rush out, opening the back doors of the truck, beginning to unload. One of the men, sloping past, looks up at Stacey and grins knifedly.

  — My God. It isn’t possible. He looked at me like I’m a whore or something. And I can’t say to him,
Listen bud I’m a respectable married woman named thus
. Because here I’m not. They don’t know what I am. They only see a woman in slacks and sweater, in the cab of Buckle’s truck. My, my. Doesn’t that seem strange. Do I mind? Am I offended? Hell, no. I’m delighted.

Buckle climbs back into the truck, waves to cohorts, starts up and they are off, back into the city.

How you doing?

Fine. Buckle, I think I should get home quite soon. I mean, if Bertha and Julian get back with Jen and I’m not there

Relax.

Yeh, well

Relax. How many days off do you get, Stacey? C’mon to my place. We’ll have a beer, and you’ll be home in lots of time to

I can’t.

Why not?

Well, I don’t think there’s time

There’s time.

Well

It’s settled, then. I never wanted to ask you and Mac to my place after Julie took off.

Why not?

Well, it’s not the same, like, is it?

Don’t you have to take the truck back to Ace?

It can wait. They won’t say anything. If they do, let them. They don’t want to lose me.

Grenoble Street, finally, not far from the docks, and Buckle draws into an alley to park. He climbs out, goes around to the other side, and hands Stacey down. The alley is wet with leftover rain, and littered with chocolate bar wrappers, crumpled newspapers, a few purple paper squares from the discarded paraphernalia of quick love, an eggshell or two dropped from emptied garbage tins and resting fragile on the edge of mud ponds, a grapefruit husk from the beginning of someone’s new day.

Okay, Stacey?

Yes.

The apartment is over a store which sells cut-price children’s clothes. Honest Ernie’s. The plastic raincoats glisten yellowly from the window, and the rows of rubber boots, black white or red, diminish from teen down to doll boots for creatures knee high to a grasshopper, who will plod purposefully through all the puddles of spring. Stacey looks away, reproached.

The stairs are covered with brown linoleum. On the second landing Buckle stops, takes out his key and opens the door. Stacey hesitates, smoothing her sweater down over her hips. Buckle takes her elbow gently, and they are inside.

The room is large. There is probably a bathroom and a bedroom or two elsewhere, but this room is for living and cooking. The window opens onto Grenoble Street, and the whine and wham of traffic curl upward and in. The floor is covered with the same brown linoleum as the stairs. A round
oak table stands at one side of the room, covered in a white plastic lace-patterned cloth unrecently wiped over and yellow-flecked with egg yolk from the frying pans of the past. The gas stove stands in a corner, beside a sink which has a calico frill around its lower portions to hide the pipes. A chesterfield, once upholstered in grey, now worn to its cloth bone, stands gawkily in the center of the room. None of this creates more than a momentary flicker on Stacey’s eye camera. All she is looking at is the big armchair positioned near the window.

Arbuckle – that you?

Yeh. Who else?

The woman is gigantic, outspread like rising dough gone amok, swelling and undulating over the stiff upholstery of the chair, gaping body covered with tiny-flower-printed dress huge and shroud-shaped, vastly numerous chins trembling eel-like separate but involved, eyes closed, and at the end of the Kodiak arms, contrasting hands neatly made, fine-fingered, encrusted with silver-and-gold-colored rings which might almost have been costly, from the way the hands flairfully wear them.

Beside her, on a low table within easy reach, is a brown teapot and a pink-pearl opalescent glass mug. The hand reaches out.

Stacey makes as if to step forward. Buckle stops her, holding her shoulder.

You don’t have to. She doesn’t know you’re here.

What?

She’s blind.

Then Stacey sees that it is true, for the hand searches for the teapot’s handle, finds it, feels skillfully for the mug, and pours, the other hand slipped inside the rim of the mug to judge the rising height of the liquid. Stacey looks at Buckle. He is standing in front of her, her hands on his narrow hard-boned
hips, and he is laughing but without sound. His voice is low, but not all that low.

She wasn’t always blind. Another broad threw acid at her once. No doubt she deserved it, for whatever it was she did. After that she couldn’t work her beat any more, but she was getting beyond it anyhow. It was only then that she put on all the tonnage, though. Don’t worry, Stacey. She isn’t listening. Did you think it was tea in the pot?

What? I don’t know what you

It’s port, the cheapest money can buy. She likes it to be in a teapot, that’s all. She thinks it looks more respectable. Who sees it, but never mind. You gotta be respectable, maybe, if you’re a retired

Buckle. No.

You don’t want me to say it? Okay. I won’t. Well, now you know why I never asked you here. She moved in the minute Julie left. Hey, I was forgetting. That beer. There’s lots in the fridge. We got a fridge, in case you didn’t notice. Then I think maybe we’re gonna

I can’t

Buckle opens two bottles of beer and hands Stacey one. She does not want it, and puts it aside on the table. Buckle’s straight black hair falls over his eyes and he brushes it back. His face is brown, sharp, smiling.

You wouldn’t have come here if you couldn’t. So don’t give me that line, eh?

He is wearing his usual jeans which proclaim his sex. His shirt is a black sports shirt, decorated with artificial gold threads, open at the neck. Stacey smells him, the clean sweat smell, the dust, the oil, the smell of man-flesh. She holds herself in hiatus, waiting. Waiting for the clue, the instructions which she will follow. She can feel his shoulder bones under her fingers
although she has not touched him. She can almost feel his sex in her. In the chair beside the window, the undersea giant woman raises the pearl-pink heavy cup to her mouth and drinks unspeaking, listening or not listening.

Can she?

No. I told you. It’s afternoon. She’s away to hell and gone. So?

Stacey moves slowly towards him, not with the slowness of caution but the opposite. Then, as she is about to place her hands on him, his acute rasping voice.

Okay that’s it don’t touch me

What he is doing now concerns only himself, his sex open and erect in his hands. But although he retreats from her presence, he watches her, needing to see some image in eyes, some witness to the agony of his pleasure.

You won’t get it Julie didn’t like it when I did it this way all she ever wanted was to take it you’re not getting it see

Stacey looks at him only for an instant. Then fear like tides. She turns for the door and finds beside her on the floor two silver coins, thrown.

There’s your bus fare, lady.

She realizes that she has no money on her. She reaches down to the floor and picks up the silver. Then she runs. Down the stairs, onto the inhabited street, to the bus stop.

Saturday, and Mac arrives home midafternoon. Stacey is ironing a dress for Katie to wear to the school dance this evening.

You’re home early.

Yeh. Where are the kids, Stacey?

Down looking at TV. Why?

Come on into the study for a minute, will you?

What’s up?

Just come.

Okay. Wait till I unplug my iron.

She follows him into the study. Mac lights a cigarette and stands looking out the window.

Close the door, Stacey, will you, please?

Hey, what is it? Okay. There.

Mac turns to face her, and she sees in his eyes some nearly unbearable pain. His voice is steady, deliberately contained, exaggeratedly calm.

Buckle phoned me.

The nerves at the base of Stacey’s stomach begin crawling.

Oh?

Yes. He told me.

He told you – what?

Everything. How you wouldn’t take no for an answer. How he finally took you to bed.

He told you
that?

Yes. Well? What’ve you got to say?

Fury floods in adrenalin bursts through Stacey’s veins. She hears her voice, raucous.

What d’you mean, what have I got to say? Who’re you? God? You don’t own me. You believed Buckle, didn’t you? It’s a lie I never did any such thing

Then, at last, she hears the outraged virtue in her own voice

  — Oh God. No, I didn’t do any such thing. But I would’ve, if Buckle had. No, damn it, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t even like Buckle. Even at that moment I didn’t like him. I would’ve stopped. I would’ve found I couldn’t go through with it. Wouldn’t I? I don’t know. I think I would have gone to bed with him. Even there. With her there. How could I? Buckle was smart – he found a two-edged sword.

Why would Buckle lie about a thing like that, for Christ’s sake, Stacey?

If you don’t know, then there’s no use me telling you. But you’d take the word of a friend against mine, wouldn’t you?

He’s no friend of mine, not any more. Stacey – why? Why would you? Was it true?

No.

You went to his place, though, didn’t you?

Yes. I went. I don’t know why. I can’t explain. You wouldn’t believe me. But I went. All right, I went. But that’s all. I never I never I never

For God’s sake keep your voice down. No need to scream

I’m not screaming

You are. Now
cut it out
, see?

All right I won’t say a word what’s the use

Oh Stacey for God’s sake don’t go on like that. Quit crying. Okay. Okay. I believe you.

Do you?

Mac puts out his cigarette and lights another. His hands are not steady and his face is misshapen with a private grief.

I don’t know what the hell to believe. I just don’t see why you went to Buckle’s place at all, that’s all. It doesn’t make sense. I would’ve thought I could’ve trusted both of you.

It would be the absolute end of the world even if it had happened?

Mac puts one hand on her shoulder and tightens it around the bone.

I won’t have anybody else touching you see

Stacey yanks away and looks at him unbelieving.

  — He’s really hurt. And I’d like to comfort him but how can I – it’s I who’ve caused it. And yet I hate him for feeling that way about me. I might as well be a car or a toothbrush.
Damn him. Damn Buckle. Damn both of them. I want to go away by myself. Right away. Far.

What about the girl, Mac? Thor’s secretary. That’s different, I suppose. It’s okay for you to touch her.

Pain changes to anger in Mac’s eyes.

Yes, it
is
different, if you really want to know. It’s not what you’re obviously thinking.

I bet I just bet

  — We go on this way and the needle jabs become razor strokes and the razors become hunting knives and the knives become swords and how do we stop?

Leave her out of it, Stacey. Just leave her out of it. You don’t know a damn thing about it, so shut up about it, eh?

I will shut up. I’ll just do that little thing. Don’t worry I won’t say a word about anything from now on

For God’s sake, Stacey, quit acting like a child.

I’m
acting like a child? What about you? I suppose if a chance acquaintance told you I’d robbed a bank you’d believe that too

I told you I don’t know what in hell to believe

Well that shows pretty clearly what you
do
believe

Now listen here Stacey

Sh – the kids are coming upstairs.

That night in bed he makes hate with her, his hands clenched around her collarbones and on her throat until she is able to bring herself to speak the release.
It doesn’t hurt. You can’t hurt me
. But afterwards neither of them can sleep. Finally, separately, they each rise and take a sleeping pill.

The following day Mac’s father arrives for Sunday lunch. Matthew is as scrupulously dressed as always, his dark suit clean and well pressed, his fine faintly lemon-colored white
hair brushed neatly. But there is one difference. He is carrying a black silver-topped cane.

Hello, Stacey, my dear. How are you?

Oh, just fine, thanks. How’re you? The cane is new, isn’t it?

Well, not exactly new. My congregation gave it to me some years ago, and do you know, at the time I thought I would never have occasion to use it. But I’ve found a little bit of difficulty in navigating the steps at the apartment just recently, so I dug this out. It’s most useful. Where is Clifford?

Out cleaning the car.

Oh yes, of course. And the children – at Sunday school, I suppose?

Yes. The boys are, at least. Katie got home rather late from the school dance last night, so I thought just this once.

  — Katie got home at two in the morning and I was frantic and couldn’t sleep despite sleeping pill and she was furious at me for being frantic. What if she gets pregnant? What if some guy is really cruel to her, sometime, ditching her? What if she takes drugs? Whatifwhatifwhatif? Then I think I’m worrying needlessly, just like my mother did, and Katie isn’t stupid and she was with a whole group of kids. And I think she’s probably a damn sight more principled than I am at this point.

Matthew is looking at her gravely, nodding his head as though with understanding.

Oh, I know Katherine doesn’t miss going many Sundays, Stacey. I quite realize that. But a few weeks of not attending can develop into a habit, you know. Not that I’m implying it will, in Katherine’s case. I’m sure you and Clifford are much too conscientious parents to allow that.

  — I and Clifford as parents you do not have one single solitary notion about. If I ever said that, what would Matthew
say? Would he have a stroke? Or would he just be quietly wounded? Nothing ever can come out. I sometimes see us like moles, living in our underground burrows, with eyes that can’t stand any light. Once I thought it was only people like Matthew and my mother who had that kind of weak eyes. Now I know it’s me, as much. C’mon, Stacey, say something nice, something agreeable.

BOOK: The Fire-Dwellers
12.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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