Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards Page B

as Ridge Road, with his coat and mittens on, alone in a snowbank. Adele became coolly efficient at spotting his huge somewhat misshapen back against the long evening sky.
    Then he gave it up for three months.
    One night, after that three months, when Rita needed him to baby-sit, his nerves were bad; that is, she was goingout with people he felt had made fun of him and he felt one drink would make everything all right.
    Well, all I need is one drink , he thought to himself. One beer. What’s a beer – it is nothing – a beer is nothing – it’s not going to be like last time – yes last time –”
    And with these thoughts he went back and forth and looked out the window nervously – convinced at this instant that he would not drink. Or if he did everything would be different.
    He had promised Rita he would baby-sit Adele. Rita was helping to make props for the Christmas play, she was pregnant with Milly. She had tried to get Joe interested in the Christmas play because she knew as long as he was working he would not drink – and Rita perhaps could also sense a drunk coming on.
    It was getting close to Christmas and Joe had always found staying sober at Christmas impossible.
    “Keep care of Delly – I’ll keep care of Delly – no problem.”
    Thinking of a drink he was accustomed to the immediate fear that was now associated with this thought – and then the overwhelming security that he had been dry for three months – and that one beer wouldn’t hurt.
    One beer is not going to make the difference between life and death , he thought. The fact that Rita did housework for people who had no respect for him suddenly came to mind and made him angry.
    He woke up Adele and put her in the half-ton and headed to the tavern. He had stolen the Christmas money that Rita kept in the kitchen drawer, but he only planned to use a small amount of it, and he proceeded to buy two draft, while Adele waited out in the truck. He stared at them for an hour – almost, he was sure – resolved to not drink them.
    Later that night he made it back home – up over the bank with stars sparkling off the snow, singing an old Irish song he’d learned on his ship, remembering a fight in Vancouver, and forgetting completely about the truck, or Adele sitting in it.
    Rita was still a young woman and there were men, who for obvious reasons thought she was easy, or available. That is, they assumed concern for her, because they could condescend to her husband. To make matters worse, they often pretended that they liked Joe, and that they wished to include him in what they did. Joe would sometimes find himself going somewhere with Rita, and feeling that she was embarrassed he was there.
    Joe felt, only rightly, that it was not him they wanted, it was her, and though he didn’t tell Rita this, the same stubbornness he had when he had thrown the Chief Petty Officer down the stairs came over him.

As it happened, every six or seven months Myhrra would find new friends. And so, caught up with new friends, Myhrra didn’t come to the house very often. Sometimes, feeling obligated, she would drop in, sit down in the chair for a moment, and then she would be out the door after a cup of tea.
    One always knows how a family feels toward you by how the children react to your presence. It was invariable that Adele and Milly were now scared stiff that Myhrra would leave once she got there, or that she would stay only a certain amount of time, or that Joe or Rita, who seemed to have no one coming in at all anymore, would do something to make her leave. Adele would always try to tell some jokes to lighten everyone up, and Milly would tell these jokes right after her. Myhrra would sit there listening, in her blue slacks and kerchief, and then, just at the punch line (or so it seemed to Adele), she would get ready to leave. No matter how fast she told her joke, or no matter what style she told it in, or no matter how Rita sat, Myhrra would (it seemed to Adele) be