JANE CAWTHORNE
When the dog started coming around, I begged to keep him. I was eight years old and couldn’t resist his wiry fur and one perked up ear. He was a dog who would listen to your problems or run eight miles in a snowstorm to get help if you busted your leg. He was a dog who could have had his own TV show. Dad wouldn’t let us keep him. He said we couldn’t afford a pet and, anyway, animals were for working or for eating. But we all knew the dog only kept coming around because Dad was feeding him scraps.
After a month or two, Mom gave him a collar. Dad came into the kitchen while Mom was drying the dishes and held the collar up in front of her like he was presenting evidence to a jury. “Was this you?”
“Yes.”
“Strays don’t have collars.”
“It’s not a stray. You feed it every day. Danny walks it.”
I didn’t want to get into trouble. “No I don’t. It just follows me. I can’t help that.”
Mom shook her head and stacked the last of the plates back inside the cupboard.
“You women are always trying to domesticate everything. Let the dog be. Danny, stop walking the dog. It’s not yours.”
But with winter coming, Dad made a swinging door into the garage and left an old plaid sleeping bag on the cement floor so the dog wouldn’t be cold. I bought him treats from my birthday money and named him Buddy, but I was the only one who called him Buddy. Everyone else called him “the dog.”
Dad worked on the disassembly line at the Hanover slaughter-house. Any kid in town could tell you what happened to a cow once it went into the chute. First, it got shot in the head with a stun gun. Then it got hooked up to an overhead track by its hind legs and flipped upside down. Next, the throat got slit. The blood drained out and went through a grate and into a trough that ran the length of the line. After that, the hide got peeled back from the neck. Dad did the next job, which was to cut the cow straight down the centre of the belly and pull its innards out. If he nicked the intestines, he would contaminate the whole carcass. Guys got fired for that. But Dad was good with a knife. Fast. Precise. Once it was eviscerated, the carcass got split in half down the centre of the backbone, and the pieces got smaller and smaller until they were nice and neat and bloodless, wrapped in cellophane and ready for a supermarket shelf.
“Thank God for the all the crazy shapes and sizes of cows,” Dad used to say, “If it weren’t for that, we’d all be replaced by robots. That’s job security.”
Mom never said slaughterhouse. She called Dad’s work an abattoir. She was different from the other moms we knew. She was from Toronto. She played piano. After school, I’d come home to the smell of pot roast from the kitchen and the sound of a sonata from the living room. She played Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and Mozart, studying the sheet music and making notations. Sometimes she would play the same eight or ten measures a hundred times in a row, her wrists high, her thin fingers flying over the keys. When she was like this she was lost to us. My brothers and I could come home with bloody noses and she wouldn’t notice. Mom’s parents had expected her to go to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and become the wife of an architect, lawyer, or doctor. After she and Dad eloped, her parents sent her their baby grand piano. Mom called that “a gesture.” Every year or two, they would send Mom a train ticket and she would visit them. She always went alone. To me, her parents were a photograph in a drawer. That was before we went to live with them after everything happened with the dog.
Even if it was only a baby grand, we probably had the only grand piano for a thousand miles. It took up three quarters of the living room. Mom polished it to a mirror finish once a week, and every spring she would call the piano tuner to undo the damage caused by the dry prairie winter. She treated the piano tuner with the deference usually reserved for a doctor, and she would guide him by the elbow from the door to the piano. For as long as I could remember, he would come in the spring and place his white cane against the low notes of the keyboard, sit down and play a few runs, and then make “tsk” sounds for an hour or so as he worked.
The piano tuner was like no other man I had ever seen. He always wore a suit and tie and smelled like soap and ironing. He was thin and straight backed and used to take my hand and hold it for a minute when he visited. He didn’t shake it; he held it, sometimes putting it between both of his hands and giving it a little squeeze. When I was about five, he asked me when I was going to start to play. I didn’t know what to say, but after he left, I ran my fingers up and down the keys careful not to press any. Mom hated it if we goofed around at the piano. That night, Mom told us the piano tuner had once played Carnegie Hall.
“What’s Carnegie Hall?” I asked.
Andrew punched my leg and I yelped.
Dad swatted the back of Keith’s head. “Don’t hit your brother.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“That’s enough.” Mom told us about big concerts she had been to in Toronto and I forgot how much my leg smarted. She asked me, “Would you like to learn? You’d have to study very hard to be as good as the piano tuner.”
Keith sneered. “Piano is for girls.”
“Not true,” said Mom. “Look at Liberace.”
Andrew and Keith howled. Dad tried not to laugh and Mom scowled at him.
Dad pulled himself together. “Your long-suffering mother has had five sons and finally one is interested in the piano. If Danny wants to learn to play, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Mom got up and patted Dad on the shoulder. “That’s right. We’ll start lessons. Twice a week after school, Tuesday and Thursday.”
Keith mouthed, “Mama’s boy.” I stuck my tongue out and Dad cuffed me on the side of the head, but that didn’t wipe the smile from my face. After dinner, Mom got out the special ice pack she had made for Dad’s cutting hand, slipped it on him like a mitten and kissed him on the forehead.
Dad said, “Play something for me.”
That was when they were still in love.
I never did set foot in the slaughterhouse. I had heard too many of Dad’s stories. Men got knocked over by swinging carcasses and fell into the blood and slop. Sometimes the stun gun wasn’t positioned quite right or the cow bolted, and it was still alive and flailing when it got flipped upside down. My brothers begged for details. They wanted all the gore, wanted to know how a guy’s arm looked when he accidentally slashed it open, if Dad had seen any bone and how many stitches it took to close up the cut.
I was haunted by the idea of human blood mixing with cow blood, the stench of cow shit and innards, and the sound it must have made when it slopped into the channel below the floor. I remember asking, “What happens to all the blood?” and my brothers went crazy-eyed. They said it got put into tomato juice and ketchup. Mom told them not to give me ideas. She told me not to worry. But she never did tell me where the blood went.
Maybe I was a Mama’s boy. Nobody paid much attention to Mom but me. I was the last to leave in the morning and the first to get home after school. Dad worked late on union business. He was the shop steward and carried a lot of weight in town. My oldest brother Brian worked at the farm supply and lived in an apartment above the store. Frank was in the army training to be a pilot. My twin brothers, Andrew and Keith, were in grade eleven and pretty much lived for the football team. And then there was me. The surprise baby. Andrew and Keith told me that Mom had really wanted a girl.
Some days, I would get home from school and she would be on the couch, an electric fan pointed right at her and the windows open even if it was snowing out. Or I would find her in the kitchen mopping her face with the hem of her apron, or sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She cried often.
One day, she was lying on the couch again with her arm folded across her eyes and said, “Danny, you know how to get a hold of your father? If something happens to me?”
“What’s going to happen to you?” I felt my panic rise and I wanted to run for the phone.
Mom moved her arm from her eyes. “Forget it. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.” But when she stood up, there was a big crimson stain on the damask couch cushion. I couldn’t breathe. I pointed at the couch and her hands flew to the back of her skirt. “Oh, for the love of Pete.”
“Should I get Dad?”
“It’s nothing. Go outside.”
But it wasn’t nothing. I grabbed my bike and rode as fast as I could to the farm supply. When I found Brian, I told him what had happened. He blushed and told me to lower my voice. He told me it was just woman stuff. He said everyone’s mother went through it. He said not to tell anyone else and that Mom needed her privacy.
“But the blood.”
“Trust me. Don’t worry about it.”
How could I not worry? When I got back, I went straight to the couch and checked the cushion. It was turned over, still wet underneath, but the blood was gone, and Mom was wearing a different skirt.
“Mom?” I needed to know if she would die.
“Everything’s fine, dear. Please don’t mention it to your father. And stay off the couch.”
That was when things started to fall apart.
Dad was late that night. By the time he came in, we had almost finished dinner. He went to the fridge, grabbed a beer and brought it to the table. “Sorry I’m late. Had to fill out an accident report. New guy lost three fingers this morning. We only found one. Don’t buy ground beef for a while.” He said this lightly like a joke, but we could tell by the look on his face and the tightness of his jaw that it wasn’t funny.
I stared at my last bit of sausage. For once, the twins didn’t ask for details. We kept quiet and waited for Dad to say more. We knew he had a lot on his mind and although he always told us it wasn’t our business, I always felt like it was.
In a while he said, “We told them the line’s moving too goddamn fast.”
“Dennis, please. The children.” Andrew and Keith shot each other a crooked half-smile. Mom put her knife and fork down and pushed her plate away. “Let me get you a glass.”
“Don’t bother.” He massaged his wrist.
Mom stood. “Your ice pack.”
“Doesn’t help. Just get me the damn pills. They’re going to bust the union. You mark my words.”
Mom skirted around him to the cupboard and came back to the table with his pills. He tilted his head back and swallowed them, washing them down with beer.
“I’m calling the piano tuner this week,” Mom said, trying to change the subject.
Dad put his beer bottle down. “You know we can’t afford it.”
“But, we do it every—”
“The piano sounds fine to me.”
“Would you let the car go without service?”
Andrew’s and Keith’s eyebrows shot up. Mom hardly ever talked back to Dad.
“That racket when it idles isn’t the sound of a car that’s seen a mechanic lately.”
“I could teach a few piano lessons.”
“We’re fine.”
Mom kept going. I was thrilled but terrified too. “I’d be grateful for something to do. I’ve got time on my hands.”
“You’ve got Danny to teach.”
Everyone looked at me like I’d done something wrong.
“It’s not like I’d be working,” said Mom. “It’s just lessons.”
Dad pushed away his meal and said, “I’m done,” and headed out the mudroom door to the garage. We heard the dog bark. Andrew and Keith took their plates to the sink without being asked. I fell asleep that night to the sound of Dad chopping wood in the yard.
The next morning after Dad left for work, Mom smoothed her apron over her skirt, picked up the phone and made an appointment with the piano tuner for the end of June. The twins looked up from their Wheaties.
“It’s none of your business,” she said.
By the end of the week, Mom had five students. She arranged for them to come after school and be gone well before Dad got home. The secret didn’t keep for long. On Friday, Dad stormed in after work and demanded to know if what he had heard was true.
“Lessons, Ruth? I said clear as day I was against it.”
Mom squared her shoulders. “I can’t cancel now. I’ve promised to teach until summer holidays.”
Dad left the house without saying a word. Mom shrugged her shoulders at me. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around. He always does.”
But he didn’t. Dad started missing dinner. He’d come home late smelling like the bar and then stay out in the garage until he went to bed. At nine o’clock one night, Mom sighed and sent me out with a plate of meatloaf, potatoes, and canned peas. As I approached the garage door, I heard him talking to Buddy. “What else could I do? I would have lost my job.” The dog was listening, one ear up, head tilted, with deep understanding on his face. Buddy heard me approach and tilted his head my way. I coughed and Dad turned. He saw the plate and grumbled something. I set it on the workbench.
“What happened, Dad?”
“Fletcher and Bouchard got laid off.”
They were men who lived on our street.
When I went inside and told Mom, she sent me back out with some apple crisp and a soup bone.
At the beginning of May, Dad lost his job too. Janice Kopecki’s dad drove his cop car up our driveway. Mom was waiting. It was like she already knew.
It was four in the afternoon, but Dad stumbled out of the back seat and Mr. Kopecki tipped his hat. “They called the station from Jack’s and I said I’d go get him. He’s all right. Give him some coffee.”
Mom saw him to the kitchen where he slumped in a chair. She said, “Danny, go up to the high school and see what Andrew and Keith are doing.”
I sat on the floor in the mudroom, put my sneakers on slowly and pretended to be invisible. Dad’s eyes were bloodshot, rimmed red and watery. “Twenty-four years. Where’s the loyalty? They won’t say it, but I know why. Top of the pay scale. They hire these goddamn immigrants who’ll work for nothing and don’t even know that they’re being taken advantage of.” Mom reached for the coffee pot but dad shook his head and said, “Just the pills.” He put his head down on his arms. “Ruth, I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Mom put her hand on his shoulder. He kept his head down. She went back into the cupboard and brought down a Chock Full o’ Nuts tin. She pulled money out and laid the bills on the table in front of him. “Here, I can help. It’s from the lessons.” Her face was beaming.
Dad pushed the money away, got up, knocked his chair over and stormed past me on his way to the garage. He didn’t even look at me. Mom yelled after him, “Pride goeth before the fall.” She pushed the bills back in the can and put it away. I was still in the mudroom, afraid to move, trapped between Mom in the kitchen and Dad in the garage.
Over the next few weeks, Andrew and Keith showed up only to eat and sleep. Mom took on more students. Dad drank beer in the garage. Dinner was a minefield. We kept our heads down, ate in silence and asked to be excused as fast as we could.
Then one night as we were finishing our last few bites, Dad made an announcement. “I’m putting an ad in the paper tomorrow for the piano.”
Mom’s fork clattered off her plate to the floor. When I bent down to pick it up, my heart pounded in my ears.
“Why would you do that?” Mom’s voice was cold.
“It’s worth a few thousand. Enough to tide us over until I get some work.”
“But it’s our only source of income.”
Dad banged his fist. “I’ve made my decision.”
Mom put her napkin down, stood and said, “The piano is not yours to sell.”
“It was a wedding gift. They gave it to both of us.”
Andrew tugged my arm, a signal for me to leave the room with him and Keith.
From the hallway, I heard Mom say, “No. It came from my parents. They gave it to me. Me alone.” I had never heard that voice before. She knew she was right, but the tremor in her words was full of fear and pain. I hated Dad for making her talk like that. No good would come of it. I wanted to be big, so I could be out of the house all the time like my brothers. What was happening didn’t have anything to do with me and I wished I didn’t know about it.
We heard the table squeak across the floor. “I won’t have this, Ruth. I won’t.”
“Neither will I.”
A plate crashed and the back door slammed. The dog barked. Then we heard Mom crying. Keith and Andrew pulled me into their room and they let me look at their comic books. I stayed with them until bedtime when I snuck back into the kitchen to see if there was anyone to say goodnight to. Mom was sitting at the piano, not playing, her wrists limp, her fingers still on the keys.
I try to remember the last time I actually spoke to my Dad and what it was I said. It’s funny how when you don’t know you’re doing something for the last time, you don’t pay attention to it. Maybe I said, “Please pass the salt.” I don’t know.
A week before summer vacation, I came home to a sign on the front door in Mom’s handwriting apologizing that piano lessons were cancelled. The front door was locked. I ran around to the back and into the kitchen. Mom was standing at the counter with the phone in her hand, staring at the dial. Her eyes were puffy and red. She was sweating and fanning her face as if she might faint. I was sure the piano was gone, sure that Dad had sold it.
“How could he do it?” I ran toward the living room.
“Danny. Don’t—”
I slipped past her before she could stop me. The piano was still there. I was so relieved I didn’t realize what had happened right away.
From the doorway I heard Mom say, “He didn’t mean it.”
I walked toward the keyboard gingerly, half-terrified like I was approaching a wounded animal. An axe was sticking out of it, obliterating middle B, C, C# and D.
“What happened?”
Mom sobbed. “Oh Danny, I’m sorry. The piano tuner came. Your father was furious. I never should have called him. It’s my fault.”
“Where’s the piano tuner?”
“Gone home.”
My stomach went funny. “Is he okay?”
“Yes. He’s fine. We’re all just shaken up.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned against the doorframe, put her face in her apron and wiped her eyes. When she took her hands away, she had arranged her face to be almost normal.
“What’s going to happen?” I remembered the phone in her hand. “Who were you calling?”
“I couldn’t decide.”
Andrew and Keith came in then, breathless from running. Keith sat down at the kitchen table. “This is some crazy day. Can I have a sandwich?”
Mom got out the cheese and bread. “What are you doing home so early?”
Andrew said, “Practice is cancelled. Didn’t you hear?”
Mom glanced toward me in the living room. “Sit down with your brother, Andrew. I’ve got something to tell you.” Keith leaned onto the back legs of his chair. Mom scolded. “Don’t. You’ll break it.” Andrew snickered, grabbed a slice of cheese, peeled the plastic off, folded it in three and stuffed it into his mouth. “Andrew, wait till I make sandwiches. Please. Be civilized.”
“The sirens went off and everything. The plant’s shut down.”
Mom stood motionless with the bread bag in her hand. “What are you talking about?”
Keith said, “Some maniac butchered a dog at the plant.”
Mom dropped the bread.
“Yeah. He walked in with a dog. A dog! Hooked him up by his hind legs and everything.” Keith made a slicing motion across his neck. “Someone on the line tackled the guy just as he was pulling the guts out. Cops are there. I heard they shot the guy.”
Andrew said, “They did not. They’re taking him to jail. Probably going to send him to the loony bin.”
Keith leaned way back in his chair again. “I wonder who it was?”
The bile rose in my throat.
Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Danny, go find the dog.”
I didn’t move.