“I still say ‘we’ though she’s been gone for a year...” Billy paused in the midst of his monologue with me hardly listening at all, intent as I was on building a pump house before the cold weather set in. It didn’t seem to matter. The old man’s lips still moved even while the shrill of the saw rendered all conversation impossible. He merely needed an excuse to voice his thoughts, I decided, if only to the prevailing wind.
”Yeah, I sure do miss her,” I heard him declare, as if in response to a query. “Too bad it wasn’t me who got the cancer.” The expression on his chubby face was one of wide-eyed longing. Billy was fifteen years my senior but he was blessed with far more hair and less wrinkles. There was an air of innocence about him that made him appear less intelligent than he really was. His pale eyes glistened wetly in the sunlight. He’d been at my place watching me work since daybreak. It was time we both had a coffee.
”Yep, I was married once too,” I told him. “Had a couple of kids. I’ve not seen them since they were babies. I was drinking a lot back then and one day she just took the children and left. Don’t blame her a bit. I was a real asshole in them days.” Billy nodded his head sorrowfully. “Men need to treat their wives with respect,” he said.
Billy lived just down the road in a small white house surrounded by a picket fence with roses and vines trailing here and there. Flowerbeds and shrubs nursed over the years by his wife appeared to be still well tended. A weathered sign proclaiming “Bill and Marge” lived there was tacked to a roadside tree. The couple had no children of their own but, according to Billy, a daughter from Marge’s former marriage and three grandkids used to visit almost every Sunday.
”I’d been thinking of adding another bedroom so that the grandkids could stay overnight,” Billy told me. “Marge loved those hellions so much! So did I. Still do, though I never see them,” he added wistfully.
We had drained the coffee pot and polished off half a package of cookies when Billy stood up, put out his hand and thanked me for putting up with his company.
“I get lonesome, “ he said apologetically.
“Come on over anytime,” I replied. “Anytime at all.” Strangely enough I spoke the truth.
He went home and I continued the task of getting my place habitable before winter set in. When I had purchased it in the spring I knew there was plenty of work ahead for me. No one had lived on the property for at least ten years. The broken-down log house had been infested with packrats and nesting swallows. There was nothing I could do but convert the entire building into firewood. The old well and outbuildings were salvageable but also in a state of disrepair.
Over the course of the summer I had managed to construct a small cabin. Now I planned to install some of the amenities, such as running water and a satellite dish so that I could watch the Canuck’s play hockey on TV. I might even invite Billy over sometime, if it happened that he also liked hockey.
There were twelve families living on the equally-portioned plots of land that comprised McColley’s Subdivision, named after one of Billy’s ancestors who was the original owner of the entire property. They must have been a short-lived bunch because Billy was the only McColley left. Everyone in the neighborhood except Billy and I had a dog or two and some chickens or rabbits. There were even a few goats. And of course their children were everywhere, buzzing around on bicycles and all-terrain vehicles. I could peer out my window and observe the activities associated with young people and their families without having any of the responsibility.
My boys should be in their late teens by now, I calculated. Even Charles, the youngest, probably had his driver’s license. My mind wandered as I cut boards and pounded nails. Compared to building the cabin, constructing a pump-house was a job I could do in my sleep. My oldest son, Gordon, named after me, was the serious one whereas Charles was a born extrovert. Of course their personalities might have changed, depending on life’s circumstances. A feeling of shame washed over me as I recalled how completely I had isolated myself from them. For awhile after the separation, I had sent support money to various addresses in the BC Central Interior. Their mother had moved a lot before she married Dave. Good thing she married him too. It was around that time that I ended up in jail for drunk driving causing a death. A teen-aged girl had died because I couldn’t stay away from the bottle. I hadn’t told Billy about that.... Only good thing was I never touched a drop ever again.
Following my three-year incarceration I’d managed to earn a sparse livelihood by working at odd jobs for about twelve years. A steady job was out of the question because of the back injury I’d sustained during the accident. Sometimes it hardly bothered me at all, while at other times I couldn’t even get out of bed. Last year I finally attained permanent disability status and received a lump sum from an old pension fund. But I was still incognito as far as anyone in my previous life was concerned. I think I would rather the boys starve than learn that their dad was a jailbird. Besides I had no idea where they lived. They may even have left the province.
After the leaves turned color, the weather warmed and—just like that—it was Indian summer. The nicest season of the year, when and if it happened. I’d been pushing myself hard thinking winter would set in early and my back was telling me it was time to slow down. I decided it was time to do a little fishing. Billy had an aluminum boat and plenty of tackle and had been hinting about a lake only a few miles from the subdivision that was chockfull of rainbow trout. The road was bad, he’d warned, but nothing that my four-wheeled drive truck couldn’t handle.
We managed to load the surprisingly heavy boat into the back of my truck, despite the infirmities associated with Billy’s advancing age and my own misspent youth. The trail was a bit rough but the grade down to the lake was easier than I’d expected. The lake’s surface gleamed like a mirror in the bright sunlight and was broken only by the blips and splashes of the fish. Billy couldn’t wait for the boat to be launched. He’d brought his fly rod and begun casting from shore. I did the same after I noticed him reeling in enthusiastically. It wasn’t long before both of us had achieved our limit. We never did put the boat in the water.
During the following weeks Billy and I traveled up to the lake several more times to fish. Once Jimmy, the youngster from across the road, begged to accompany us, promising to help load and unload the boat. The kid had been a close buddy of Billy’s youngest step-grandson. Jimmy loved to fish and he loved to talk. He told us that he and the grandson Chuck who now resided in Quesnel, e-mailed each other all the time. Billy was delighted to hear that Chuck and his family planned to visit Grampa’s soon, probably just before Christmas. He told Jimmy to relay the message that everyone was welcome to come and stay for as long as they liked.
My pump house was doing the job it was supposed to do and I was jubilant when water finally began dribbling from the taps. The biggest celebration of all though was when I got the flusher working on my brand new toilet. Billy and I drank two pots of coffee and admired its process several times. My back seemed to be holding out pretty well and I was enjoying a relatively pain-free life. So in a masochistic moment, I suggested to Billy that if he wanted to renovate his house to accommodate visitors I would help him.
We began work on the extra bedroom in late October and, proceeding slowly, completed the job—outside and inside—by the second week in December. Billy had it planned that the grandsons would sleep there while the youngest, a little girl, would share the big waterbed in the master bedroom with her mother. Billy would sleep in the living room as he had done since Marge passed away.
“I couldn’t even go into the bedroom until a few weeks ago,” he confided. “Left everything the way it was. Her dresses in the closet and my clothes too. It got plenty dusty in there. But it’s clean now.”
We took time out from the carpentry work to watch the Canucks play hockey on my brand new TV. Billy liked to cook so he would concoct the snacks at his place while my job was to supply the endless cups of coffee. Jimmy would sometimes stop by to watch the games with us. The reception on the television at his house was snowy, he explained. The kid ate so many of Billy’s snacks it was as if he’d inhaled them. It was a wonder he wasn’t fat, I thought in amazement. But the sixteen year old was a tall, gawky lad with no surplus meat at all on his bones.
”I got an e-mail from Chuck,” Jimmy told us one evening, “If his Mom’s car is working properly, they’ll be out for Christmas for sure. His mom will phone before they leave.”
We were just putting the finishing touches on Billy’s extra bedroom when the cold weather hit. The thermometer plummeted to 35 below Celsius and stayed that way for three days. Then it snowed. Typical Northern BC winter weather. The snow was a welcome sight because it flushed away the extreme cold but the white stuff didn’t know when to quit. My snowblower hardly even cooled off. I did my own driveway several times and Jimmy borrowed it to plow Billy’s as well as his own. I was getting so I liked that kid a lot. Despite his lanky frame he had plenty of energy and ambition.
Billy’s guests arrived three days before Christmas. I noticed the nineteen-eighty’s vintage Dodge veering its way past my place shortly before noon. Got a glimpse of a dark haired woman behind the wheel, a child in the passenger seat and two young men in the back. The driver knew what she was doing on the unplowed road, maintaining just enough speed to keep from getting stuck but not enough to end up in the ditch.
That evening Jimmy and his friend Chuck arrived at my place to watch the Canucks play hockey. Billy stayed home although I knew he was itching to watch the Edmonton Oilers get licked. The three of us inhaled an ice-cream bucket half filled with Christmas goodies that Chuck’s mother had baked. The boys chatted loudly and enthusiastically between plays. No wonder they were good friends, I thought, their personalities were identical. Chuck was a head shorter than Jimmy but from what I could gather was a top-notch hockey player.
”Hey, you wouldn’t believe how this guy can skate.” Jimmy informed me in admiring tones. He added the information that Chuck had been scouted by the Prince George Spruce Kings but his mother had decided he was too young.
During the game’s quieter moments the boys wrestled and cavorted on the floor, launching into loud yahoos and groans of dismay when the action on the ice sped up. Halfway between the second and third period Chuck returned from a trip to the bathroom and laid a huge bombshell on me. He held a photograph in his hand that I had mounted in a homemade wood frame and hung on a wall in the john. That way I could observe the wrinkled black and white print of my small boys at least once a day.
”I guess Grampa Billy must have given you this picture of me and my brother?” Chuck inquired. “Mom’s got the same one on her bedroom dresser, only it’s enlarged.”
My mind catapulted. I muttered something he must have taken as an affirmative because he went on, “Grampa Billy really likes you. Says you’re quite a guy which is a high compliment coming from him. You’re invited for Christmas dinner, by the way,” he added.
I wished fervently for the hockey game to resume. I recalled receiving the photo in the mail years ago from my ex-wife. It must have been shortly before she married Dave.
“Will your dad be up for Christmas?” I asked.
“My dad died four years ago, “ Chuck replied, then turning to Jimmy stated, “He wasn’t my real dad, you know. My real dad was a hero in the Vietnam War. Wiped out a whole bunch of Vietcong before he was killed.” Then, making noises like a machine gun, he began to pummel Jimmy, who was more than willing to retaliate.
The Canucks won their game, but later I couldn’t even recall the score. I hardly slept a wink all night and, at one point, even dug out my old suitcases. My impulse was to cut and run. I wondered who had told Chuck the story about me in Vietnam. I decided that the kid had made up the story. Maybe Dave hadn’t been such a good dad? Why else would he have found it necessary to idealize me?
The following morning, just as I was working on my second pot of coffee, who else but Billy comes trudging up my driveway. His face was red as a beet although it wasn’t cold out and I could see that he was staggering a little. “Got chest pains,” he groaned. “Guess I should see a doctor. But the oldest boy’s got my truck and the others are still sleeping.”
I got him into the house and gave him an aspirin which is supposed to thin the blood and prevent heart attacks. Then I took a couple myself because my back was attempting to kill me—probably because I was as tense as a rabbit in a denful of foxes. Billy coiled himself into a fetal position on my couch while I dashed outside to warm up the truck. When I came back the expression on his face was serene, almost joyous. “Don’t go to too much trouble, son,” he whispered. “I can hardly wait to see her.”
But Billy didn’t die, at least not then. As I told him later that would have spoiled my Christmas. I snapped the truck’s transmission into four-wheel-drive and, in spite of the slippery road conditions, made it to the emergency clinic in record time. From there Billy was loaded into an ambulance and transported to the hospital in Prince George. I followed behind in my truck. I’d phoned Billy’s home number before leaving the clinic and for the first time in my life talked to an answering machine. “Thank God for modern technology,” I thought with intense relief. If my ex-wife had answered the phone, I might have ended up on oxygen and riding in the ambulance with Billy.
That night I slept in a motel in a section of the city that had been my old stamping grounds many years earlier. In fact I had met my future wife in a bar just a few doors down from where I stayed. Both of us had been under the legal age for drinking. She was with some yahoo who eventually passed out in the men’s room and I ended up being her hero because I was sober enough to drive her home. She looked a little like Elizabeth Taylor with those blue eyes that Chuck had inherited and dark hair. He had her personality too—open, outgoing and trusting.
The following morning Billy was pronounced as good as new and we headed for home. I mentioned that I had spent the night in what used to be the gutter section of town.
“Oh yeah, that’s where you two met,” Billy answered casually. A few seconds later he took notice of my obvious astonishment and went on to explain, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything to her, but I did. I told her about you on the phone before she came up from Quesnel.” He hesitated again, “I’ve known you were the boy’s dad ever since I saw that picture on your wall. She has fond memories of you, you know.... Dave was such a jerk, you seem good now in comparison.”
At that moment, I wished passionately I’d chased Billy home to his lonely house the morning he’d watched me work on the pumphouse.
“You think you know so damned much about me!” I spat. “Did you know that I spent three years behind bars for drunken driving causing a death?”
”No I didn’t know that,” Billy replied, “But I suspected something made you curl up in your shell like a sick turtle.” He grinned and suddenly my misdirected anger dissolved as if it had never been. I recalled the joy that went through me the other night when I learned that Chuck was my son.
“Thanks, old buddy,” I said to Billy.
“Anytime,” he drawled, “Anytime at all.”
Christmas Day was great although sometimes a bit confusing with my ex-wife and myself pretending we’d only met for the first time. She was still a darned fine-looking woman and I suspected that despite my balding hairline she didn’t find me that unattractive either. I mentioned I was getting a telephone in soon and might give her a call. Chuck looked pleased when I said that. His brother Gord was more on the serious side, as he had been as a baby. Right now Gord was serious about a girl he’d met who lived right here in the subdivision. When the two were not together, they were joined at the ear—via the telephone. After dinner Billy and I took turns playing electronic games with eight-year-old Vicki. She had inherited her mother’s outgoing nature and her beautiful blue eyes.
Billy died one week after his guests went home. Jimmy found him in the bedroom stretched out on the waterbed, stiff as a board. Billy had one of those wood stoves that have to be filled twice a day. The kid had been suspicious when he saw that no smoke was coming from the chimney. It had been colder inside the house than it was outside.
”What freaked me out the most,” Jimmy confided later, “Was that he looked as if he’d died with a smile on his face.”
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