Homesick

Driesen’s left hand. In his right he clutched a bottle of alcohol and some cotton balls.

“Loaded and ready to fire,” said Huff agreeably. “Loaded and ready to fire.”

“Fine,” said Vera, betraying gathering apprehension as she gnawed her bottom lip. “Get your sleeve rolled up.”

“Oh, not in my arm,” said Huff smoothly. “I don’t take my needle in my arm, Vera.”

“Where do you take it then?”

“Here,” said Driesen, striking his flank with his palm. “Here, where I got some meat.”

Vera looked doubtful. On the other hand, she didn’t want to prolong the ordeal with argument and questions. “All right,” she said, “what do I do?”

“You wipe me down with alcohol, pinch up some skin and fat, shove in the needle, and push down the plunger. You do it right, Vera, you got yourself a full-time job as my nurse.”

“Don’t tempt me to injury, Driesen.”

“Oh, don’t give me none of that, Vera. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I don’t hurt flies,” said Vera. “I kill them.”

Driesen chuckled. “ ‘I kill them,’ ” he repeated to himself. “ ‘I kill them.’ ”

“Come on,” said Vera, “I haven’t got all day. Get your pants down.”

Huff was eager to comply. He turned his back on her, unbuckled his belt, and dragged down trousers and underpants all at once, exposing saggy, creased buttocks to view.

Vera swore to herself she wouldn’t get rattled. Concentrating, she gingerly swabbed down a patch of skin, then pinched up a roll of flesh and skin. It felt queer and rubbery to the touch and left her with a distasteful sensation.

“My,” said Huff, “aren’t your fingers cool? But you know what they say. Cool hands, warm heart. That’s what they say. Is that true, Vera?”

“Shut up and hold still,” ordered Vera, taking aim with the syringe. It wasn’t easy because Driesen seemed to be fumbling and fidgeting with something in front, shirt buttons perhaps.

“You know,” he said, his voice suddenly grown harsh, “it’s what you want at a time like this – a woman’s gentle touch. I could get used to this. How about it? Would Vera like to be Huff’s private nurse?”

Vera’s answer was to stick him. The sight of the needle buried in the old man’s tensed buttock came as such a shock to her that she lost all recollection of what the next step was. Several seconds ticked by before she recovered, eased down the plunger with shaking fingers, and snatched out the syringe. There, it was done.

Huff turned and faced her. He smiled as he lifted up his shirt. “Look what Vera done. Pretty good for an old fellow, eh?” He smirked proudly, displaying a mangy nest of pubic hair from which a limply swollen member dangled, making fitful attempts to lift a head drooling a drop of liquid the colour and consistency of egg white.

“Oh yes,” he said, looking down at himself approvingly as he began to roughly pull and stretch his penis, “just give the old fellows half a chance and they’re sure to satisfy.”

It was with the broom near to hand in the corner that Vera knocked him down. The jars of face cream and hand lotion which he dragged down from the dresser as he fell were still rattling like hail on the floor when she burst out of the bedroom, across the living room, and blew wild-eyed and raving into the kitchen.

“Out!”

Driesen’s cronies had time only to pop open their mouths before the broom slashed the tabletop and sent cards and money flying, glasses skittering, and beer spraying into the air.

“Out!”

Chairs were overturned in the scramble to escape her, cries of consternation and alarm arose as Vera’s broom descended on heads and upraised hands, left, right, and centre. A panicked Huff, hands clutching his waistband, bolted past her and flung himself out the door. They all followed, one of them trailing the tablecloth knotted in his fist. Vera landed her final blow cleanly between a pair of shoulder blades and heard the handle snap with a pistol- shot crack. It made her feel wonderful.

“And don’t come back!” she shouted, pitching coats and overshoes into the snow after them, disregarding her father’s beseeching cries of “Vera! Vera!” from the open door behind her.

The last of their belongings were finally loaded and they were ready to leave. Daniel clutched the tow rope of a sleigh piled high with suitcases and cardboard boxes and, like a dog straining on a leash, leaned abruptly into the thickening darkness of five o’clock on a winter’s afternoon. One sharp tug, two sharp tugs. The sleigh jerked stickily under its load, then relaxed into a smooth, flowing glide, its runners squeaking over the dry snow gone pewter in the failing light. Vera hoisted the handles of the wheelbarrow and rattled her cargo of dishes into the icy, rutted road.

Her father called out to her one last time from the doorway where he stood coatless in the cold. “If you have to go – all right. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Let me put your things in the truck and take you there. Please, Vera, listen to me. Will you listen to me? Vera!”

Vera pushed on, shoulders bouncing as the wheel of the barrow jumped in the ruts and tire tracks. She knew this was how she must go – with a sleigh and wheelbarrow borrowed from a neighbour, striking out across town for a three-room shack on the other side of Connaught, the only house to be rented on such short notice just before Christmas. The owner, who had inherited the house from his mother when she had died six months before, had been delighted to get a tenant. Nobody was willing to rent such places any more. It was too small, the thin, uninsulated walls made it impossible to heat, and it lacked running water. Mindful of its disadvantages, he had struck a deal with Vera, selling her whatever of his mother’s furniture remained in the house for next to nothing. For fifty bucks she got a woodstove in good condition, two cots, a table and four chairs, and a woodpile of seasoned poplar out back to boot.

Her father had made the last two days hell, pestering her with questions. What was wrong? Why was she leaving?

“What exactly did Huff do?” The big question.

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter now what he did. What’s done is done. Let’s just say I don’t want any more of this atmosphere for Daniel and leave it at that.”

“I’ll be sorry ten times over as soon as you tell me what I’m supposed to be sorry for. But how do you expect me to apologize until then? And, Vera, forget all this foolishness about moving out. It’s crazy. What did I do that you’ve got to move out?”

“Isn’t this typical? Isn’t this typical you’d have to ask?”

What had worried Vera most was that Daniel might mutiny. So far he had only sulked and applied the cold shoulder. At present he was stepping out so briskly that she couldn’t keep pace pushing the wheelbarrow. A show of anger, she supposed. Yesterday they had fought.

He’d been upset about the move. “Why do we have to go? We just moved this summer. Why again so soon?”

“It’s not a big move, Daniel. It’s just across town, and it’s not as if you have to change schools or anything like that. That’s why I ruled out leaving Connaught right now, so you can finish the year in the same school. When school’s over then we’ll see what we’ll do.”

“I hate that new house. It’s a shit hole.”

“It’s no palace, I grant you. But it’ll do until we can find better.”

“Three crappy little rooms. An outdoor toilet. It doesn’t even have a TV.”

“Woe is Daniel, no TV. Tragedy of tragedies. Aren’t you hard done by? Maybe a weekend in India would teach you what hardship is. It’s not missing TV.”

“You better be prepared to miss me, then,” Daniel announced. “Because I’m going to be over here with him – watching TV.”

“If I were you I’d be careful of declarations about what ‘I am and I am not going to do,’ including where you’re going to watch television. All your decisions aren’t yours to make until you’re twenty-one and that’s some time off yet, sunshine. For your information what you don’t do is watch TV over here with him. I don’t want to catch you hanging around here – ever.” Her rage was the weak, jealous, tainted rage of a child and it often drove her into thoughtless, shameful declarations. She consoled herself that Daniel knew better than to take seriously, literally, what was said in the heat of the moment. Nobody ever meant exactly what they said, did they?