Medicine Walk. Richard Wagamese

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      “The old man said I should come,” he said.

      “Grab a chair,” his father said and pointed.

      The kid pulled the chair away from the wall. He spun it and sat with his arms folded across the back of it, looking at his father and the woman.

      “Drink?”

      “Got no use for it.”

      “Smoke?”

      “Got makin’s.”

      “These are tailor-mades.”

      “Makin’s smoke better.”

      His father laughed. It came out raspy and hoarse and he coughed a few times and the woman laid a hand on his chest and looked at him, worried and protective. The cough eased and his father leaned up on one elbow and pushed himself higher in the bed and looked at the kid.

      “This here’s Deirdre,” he said, hooking a thumb toward the woman. “She’s a whore.”

      The woman slapped playfully at him and blinked at the kid girlishly and it turned his stomach some. She pushed herself up in the bed to sit beside his father, smoothed down her lank blond hair and raised the bottle to her mouth, and the sheet tumbled down so that her breasts bobbed openly and the kid felt himself stiffen and blush.

      “You could have some. She’s okay with it.”

      “Thanks. No.” the kid said.

      “Go on. It’s free.”

      “Not havin’ to pay don’t make it free.”

      “Suit yourself.”

      “I will.”

      They looked at each other and the woman eased the sheet up. They could hear the raving man down the hall and the sound of someone’s radio playing an old country waltz. The room was directly over the verandah and he heard one of the men shout at someone passing in the street and a woman’s voice let go a string of curses and the men laughed and hooted.

      “Well, I’m here,” the kid said.

      “I can see ya.”

      “So? What is it you got to say?”

      “I gotta have a whattaya call . . . agenda?”

      He shook a cigarette loose from the pack behind his pillow and lit it and blew a series of smoke rings and then raised the bottle to his face and drank. The kid waited.

      “Don’t like me much, I guess,” he said and set the bottle on the floor.

      “Don’t know you much is all,” the kid said.

      “I’m your dad.”

      The kid looked at him blandly. He took out his makings and rolled a smoke while his father and the woman watched. He lit up with a wooden match and when he blew it out he stuck it in one of the jelly jars filled with butts and ash. “Just a word to me,” he said.

      “We gotta talk, and I don’t aim to do it here.”

      “Where then?”

      “You hungry?”

      “I could eat.”

      His father prodded the woman with an elbow and she shrugged and pushed the sheet back and slipped her legs over the side of the bed. She was thin but her breasts were full and bobbed when she moved and the kid kept his eyes on her. She caught him looking and winked. Then she stood and turned to face him and stretched full out and he took another long draw on the smoke. She bent to retrieve her clothes and began to dress. His father slid out of bed and the kid could see the gauntness of him, his buttocks like small lumps of dough and the rest of him all juts and pokes and seams of bone under sallow skin. He watched him dress and finished the smoke and the woman took another jolt out of the bottle and walked to the door.

      “Later?” she asked.

      “Not likely,” his father said.

      She looked at him and the kid thought she was going to say something more but she just nodded and opened the door and stepped out and shut it quietly behind her. He could hear her move down the hallway. The raving man stopped suddenly then started up again once she’d passed, and he could hear the clunk of her steps on the rickety stairs.

      “That your woman?” the kid asked.

      “Told you,” his father said, poking at his hair with a comb. “She’s a whore.”

      His father sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a pair of work boots and laced them up halfway so that the tongues hung out and flapped. Then he picked up a tattered old denim jacket and swung it on, stood and wriggled his shoulders, and looked at the kid.

      “Take ya to eat,” he said. “My treat.”

      “Guess you’re doing your father thing now.”

      “Not especially. It’s a belly thing is all.”

      He tapped another cigarette loose from the pack on the bedside table and tucked it behind an ear then walked past the kid, opened the door, and stepped out into the hallway. The kid watched him walk away. He turned to look at the room, shook his head sadly, and walked into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. His father was a dim shadow at the head of the stairs. The kid followed him out into the street.

4

      THE PLACE WAS A DANK HOVEL. It had the look of an old garage or warehouse, a low-slung one-storey joint that hadn’t seen paint in years. There was a hand-painted sign under a lone spotlight on a rickety pole held in place by guy wires run to the roof. The sign said Charlie’s. The windows were swing outs and one of them was held open by a broomstick. Sounds from a jukebox and the garble of voices and the clink of glasses, and when they stepped through the door the kid saw a plywood bar set up on old barrels and mismatched tables and chairs strewn haphazardly around the room. The lights were dim, giving the faces that turned to look them over a pall as if they were shrouded by shadow, and the talk lowered. As the kid followed his father across the room, the weight of their eyes on him was like the feeling of being watched by something unseen on a mountain trail. His father strode through the room, merely flicking a wrist in greeting to those who spoke to him, and opened a door at the far end and stepped out onto a deck. It was suspended over the dark push of the river by huge pilings and the kid could hear the hiss and gurgle of it from beneath the boards. There were propane heaters set around and there were knots of men at the tables. His father walked to an empty table close to the railing and hauled a chair back and sat looking out over the water. The kid shook his head and when his father still did not speak he took his makings out and began to twist a smoke. He drummed his fingers on the table. After a moment he lit up and took a draw and looked out at the river streaming past like a long СКАЧАТЬ