The golden boy, p.20
The Golden Boy, page 20
“Well,” Michael said finally. “I guess I better go have a look, then. Emmett?”
“Have a look in the living room on your way past, Father,” Stafford said.
“I’m afraid to,” Michael said.
“Don’t push ahead of your father,” Mary-Jean said, but Stafford had already slipped past, and as his father came through the kitchen and into the living room, with Emmett supporting him, Stafford pointed.
“Surprise number two, Father!”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Michael said. “Will you look at that?”
“Ta-da!” Stafford said, and his brother laughed. “The Hopkinses have a television set! It was Mother’s idea. Isn’t it great! And you can relax now and watch television at night, Father. Television is very relaxing.”
But Michael Hopkins was not looking at the new RCA Victor console television in the maple laminated cabinet that Stafford was now dancing around like a child. He was staring, instead, out the bay window that overlooked the open fields west of the house.
“What is that?” he asked.
“What?” Stafford said, turning. “Oh, that?”
“Surprise number three, Father,” Emmett said.
“Gelding?”
“Mare.”
“It’s a racehorse!” Stafford said.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
“I don’t have a horse like that.”
“You do now,” Emmett said.
“Brenda Bee Hoover,” Stafford said. “That’s her name, Father. Brenda Bee Hoover Hopkins!”
“Well,” Michael said a second time, “I’ll be goddamned.”
Ten months later, Michael Hopkins would have another heart attack and he would not survive it. He would come in from the barn a little earlier than usual, knowing that something was wrong and hoping it would go away.
“I have to lie down,” he would say to his wife, and he would wave her away when she tried to help him. “I’m sick. Leave me to rest.”
She would check on him every ten minutes for the next hour until it became apparent that he was not merely sick or tired. His breathing was labored and his color was bad. She would call for the doctor then, and once again, an ambulance would arrive and take Michael Hopkins away, only this time, he would not return. He would have his third heart attack on the way to the hospital and die that night. His family would not recover from his death, and when the reality of their loss came upon them, they would fly to their separate worlds as if unable to coexist without him. But in the remaining months before that moment came, the combination of a racehorse, a second bathroom, and an RCA Victor console television set gave the Hopkins family hope, for the first time in many years, that they too could be a happy family.
Television was cowboys and Indians, variety shows, and crazy comedies about people who did nutty things. There was news at six o’clock and again at eleven and hockey games as real as if you had a seat at the game. There were cartoons and quiz shows, and there were stories about lost animals and famous explorers introduced by men with warm voices who could ease you into a story like a grandfather settling a restless child. Bonanza, The Lawrence Welk Show, and Gunsmoke meant a late Saturday night for farmers with five a.m. milking, but Little Joe and Miss Kitty and all that tap dancing were worth a night’s sleep.
“Get out my cane, Mame,” Stafford’s father would say, “and we’ll do a turn around the kitchen.”
“Oh, stop, Michael,” Stafford’s mother would reply. “Just sit down and watch the show. You’re blocking the view. Oh, my word. Will you look at those dresses! Beautiful, aren’t they? Just gorgeous.”
On Sunday evenings, Stafford and his family would take their supper on trays in the living room, where they sat, lined up on chairs, watching Walt Disney, Ed Sullivan, and then, the family favorite, Jack Benny. Stafford’s father loved Jack Benny and Rochester, and he would slap his leg and roar with laughter and repeat the jokes later, sometimes acting out both parts in the kitchen, which Stafford’s mother said made him look pretty silly, but she smiled when she said it.
There were even some good Canadian shows, including something called Front Page Challenge, which was Emmett’s favorite. It was a competition, and you could play along at home if you wanted to. There was a regular panel of news experts who had to guess the identity of a mystery guest who had done something important or interesting. “Yes” or “no,” the mystery guest would say when a question was asked, careful to keep their voice clipped in case it was recognized.
“Is this a local story?”
“Yes.”
“Are you involved in politics?”
“No.”
“Are you a public figure?”
“Yes.”
And so it would go until a panel member was ready to solve the mystery.
“Are you so-and-so from Winnipeg?”
“Yes!”
The guest would step out from behind a screen and everyone would applaud, and then there would be a friendly discussion among the people on the panel, the genial host of the program, and the guest, no longer a mystery but a real Canadian who had done something that other Canadians might find interesting. It was, Stafford’s father said, too much like being in school again for his taste. Like wanting to win a prize for spelling and knowing you weren’t going to. But Emmett would move his chair close to the television set when the show came on and nod his head when a question was good and frown when it was not.
“You’re wasting time,” he would say to the panel. “Ask about that business up at Sudbury. Ask about the factory that bucked the union.”
“You could be on that show, Emmett,” Stafford said. “You know more than they do.”
“Some of them,” Emmett said, smiling.
“More like most, I’d say,” Mary-Jean said.
“You got your brains from your mother, son,” Michael would say. “And your good looks from me. Any more of that custard pie, Mary-Jean?”
“Oh, I think there’s a slice left.”
“Marry a girl who can make a custard pie, boys, and you’ll never be sorry.”
“Oh, Michael, stop. Get your pie and sit down.”
It seemed to Stafford, then and in the years that followed, that there was no such thing as a bad night on television in 1960. Not with Red Skelton and The Jackie Gleason Show, Wagon Train, Andy Griffith, Cheyenne, and a host of others, all wonderful, night after night, all winter long. And if the Hopkins cows felt themselves rushed through evening milking that winter, it was only because Stafford’s father hated missing the start of a show. So Stafford and his father and Emmett would warm up their hands with hot water from the kitchen sink and they would go at the cows like they were in a Front Page Challenge of their own, and when they hurried back again across the frozen yard and into the house, their supper would be ready and it would be served quickly and without complaint about wet boots and jackets that fell off hooks in the mudroom.
Television was a movie theater, sports arena, newspaper, library, house party, and Broadway show all rolled into one, and for remote rural families like Stafford’s, the darkness of winter changed with the arrival of television, and the shadows were pushed back. Television was the greatest single miracle of Stafford’s childhood, and he would never forget the way it changed their lives. It kept his father entertained and away from the kitchen table, a place where after-supper arguments had always broken out, usually over a stack of unpaid bills or the absence of Emmett. It made evenings a time of excitement and laughter instead of boredom and dread. It warmed up their house and living room with the stories of others and the talents of strangers. But mostly, television freed Stafford and his family from the burden of intimacy, and for that Stafford would be forever grateful. A family could come together around a TV set, and those who made a big deal about the loss of family conversation and friendly card games had childhoods very different from Stafford’s. The fighting stopped when the talking stopped, and for a while, life was grand in the Hopkins household and Stafford’s father would shout, “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!” and everyone would laugh.
There were some, though, who resented the Hopkinses’ happiness and free-wheeling spending, but that was an old feud between an old wife and a young one.
“Well, I guess one bathroom’s not enough for Mary-Jean Hopkins. Not with her big, fancy TV set and all the visitors.”
“Come on now, Angela. You can’t blame Mary-Jean for making things easier. Not if it keeps Michael out of the hospital.”
“It’s not your brother that bothers me, Christy. It’s her! Her and her snooty looks and her new bathroom and well—everything! Just everything!”
“But we don’t need another bathroom. We’re doing fine with one.”
“Well, it would be nice to have a bath just once without my father pounding on the door and yelling about me taking all the hot water!”
“He’s an old man, Angie. Don’t fight with him about the water.”
“But it’s supposed to be my house now, Christy. It’s my water!”
“Angela, baby, don’t cry.”
Stafford’s uncle Christy was thirty-six years old when he married Emmett’s former classmate Angela Duncan, and it was common knowledge that he spoiled her shamefully but Angela Duncan, a pretty girl from a family of pretty girls, had a nervous disposition and a tendency to sulk. Her older sisters married town boys who showed no interest in farming, which sent a clear signal to the local community that Angela’s widowed father, a man with a reputation for stinginess, had both a daughter and a farm to give away and would not be giving away one without the other. But an old man could not live forever, even a stingy one, so the suitors lined up and among them were Stafford’s uncle and his brother, Emmett, who had, according to local pundits, about as much chance with old Mr. Duncan as a lame dog.
Emmett may have felt the same way, but Stafford’s mother did not. Nor did she agree with anyone who felt her older boy was not as good a catch as the next man. Emmett might have his faults, she said, but he was plenty good enough for the likes of Angela Duncan, and he was certainly better to look at because the Duncan legs were a real curse, weren’t they?
“Go call up Angela Duncan, why don’t you?” she would say to Emmett. “There’s a dance at Bill Tucker’s next Saturday.”
“What do you mean, call her?”
“On the telephone. Call her up. She’ll go to the dance with you if you ask her, Emmett.”
“Why?”
“Why? What do you mean, why? Why wouldn’t she? You started school together.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Oh, go on, Emmett. Don’t be shy.”
“I’m not.”
“My mother said you were the shyest little boy she ever saw.”
“I’m not shy, Mother.”
“You wouldn’t ever look straight at her when she came to visit. Course, she wasn’t so nice to look at, not after her eye dropped. But you can’t blame her for that. She didn’t like your father either, Emmett.”
“Nana Brennan didn’t like Father?” Stafford asked.
“Goodness, Stafford. Don’t sneak up on me like that! I thought you were at Bobby’s.”
“Who doesn’t like me?” Stafford’s father said, coming into the kitchen.
“Never mind, Michael. We’re just talking, that’s all.”
“We’re talking about Emmett’s girlfriend, Father,” Stafford said.
“Girlfriend—what girlfriend?” Emmett said, and he looked around the kitchen fast and laughed like he’d just delivered the punch line of a good joke.
“Emmett’s got a girlfriend,” Stafford said, and when Emmett laughed a second time, Stafford decided to keep going because his brother didn’t laugh that often and it felt good to make a brother laugh.
“And who’s that?” Stafford’s father asked, but Stafford interrupted.
“And he’s gonna go to a dance and then, then, then—he’s gonna get mar-reed—marrr-reed to Angela Duncan. Ohhh, Angela,” Stafford said, and then he made what he thought were a series of really good kissing sounds.
“Can it, Stafford,” Emmett said, no longer laughing, but Stafford could see that his mother was smiling and his father had laughed.
“Emmett and Angela sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I—Ow! Oww! Emmett!”
“I told you to can it, Stafford.”
“Emmett, you hit me.”
“Well maybe you oughtta just shut up when I say so.”
“I’m bleeding!”
“Jesus, Emmett! His lip’s cut. What did you do that for?”
“He’s okay.”
“He’s crying, isn’t he? And he’s going to have a nice fat lip by suppertime! I don’t call that okay.”
“He’s a crybaby.”
“He’s five is what he is. And you’re twenty and three times his size.”
“Michael, please. Don’t make things worse. Just let him apologize and he can make it up later. Emmett, say you’re sorry to Stafford.”
“I’ve got better things to do,” Emmett said, and he kicked the kitchen door open.
“Don’t turn your back on me,” Stafford’s father said, and he made a grab for Emmett’s shirt.
“Let go of me!”
Stafford didn’t see the rest. There was no point, his mother said, and she hurried him out of the kitchen and upstairs to the bathroom, where she washed the blood from his lower lip and told him to press a cold washcloth on it.
“It’s just a little scratch,” she said. “Your own tooth did all the cutting. There won’t even be a mark. You’ll see.”
Stafford waited while his mother stood looking out the window, her arms wrapped around her body. He listened to the sound of his father yelling and his brother yelling back until he heard the kitchen door slam twice and then the familiar sound of a truck racing out of the yard, which meant the fight between his father and his brother was over.
“He was always too shy,” his mother said, still looking out the window. “I don’t know why.”
“It’s my fault,” Stafford said.
“What? That your big brother’s shy? That he’s got the Brennan temper? Oh, I don’t think so, Stafford. That’s something he came into this world with. All right, that’s good enough. Hand me the washcloth. Look, it’s stopped bleeding.”
But it was more than social reticence and a hot temper that made Emmett different from other boys his age. More than shyness and other things. Emmett was awkward and his mood changed swiftly. He had no real friends in the community and he could be mean when provoked, though he was always sorry later. He had been a good student, but he left school at the end of grade nine and refused to go back. He hit a teacher who showed too much interest in the grade-nine boys, and even an appeal from his parents to finish high school elsewhere was not enough to convince him. He didn’t need an education, he said, to be a good farmer. He just needed a good farm. But he was unreliable, and while he was loved by some, he was mistrusted by many, and when alcohol became a factor, it became clear to everyone, with the possible exception of his mother, that Emmett Hopkins was a train wreck. His tentative courtship, then, of Angela Duncan was quickly dismissed by Angela’s father, who saw a better man for his daughter and a better farmer for his farm in another Hopkins man, Stafford’s uncle Christy. There was an age difference, of course, between Angela Duncan and Christian Hopkins, but it was not so great that anyone objected.
It was Stafford’s uncle, then, and not Stafford’s brother, who married pretty Angela Duncan the summer she turned twenty-one, and everyone agreed that Angela’s father had made the right choice, especially when Emmett Hopkins ruined the wedding by drinking until he passed out at the reception.
“Get him out of here,” Mary-Jean had hissed. “Take him home, Michael.”
But all of that happened when Stafford was still a little boy, not yet seven, the summer Uncle Christy married the girl Emmett liked, and he didn’t really remember the sight of his father and his uncle Frank hauling Emmett out of the church hall and into the back of the pickup truck, nor did he remember the long fight between his mother and his father that raged into the night afterward. He remembered only the excitement of going to his first wedding and how important it was that his new shirt stayed tucked into his pants all the way around, the pants that matched the jacket he had worn only once before, to his first Holy Communion. He remembered also that Emmett went away after the wedding and did not come home again for many months.
“Where’s your brother gone?” Bobby had asked him, but Stafford didn’t know.
Emmett came and he went, and the years passed, and nothing really changed for Stafford and his family until the day Emmett pulled into the yard with a five-ton cattle truck and no cattle.
Technically, the little mare Emmett brought home from Quebec was not a Thoroughbred but a Standardbred, which made her, in racing terms, a trotter. A trotter had to pull a sulky and its driver. It had to maintain a steady gait and resist the urge to gallop or run wildly whenever another horse drew near. A trotter was a horse bred to pull, but a champion trotter had to do so with a certain grace and it had to take some pride in it. Stafford’s father loved horses and kept workhorses on the farm, but they were plodders with stocky legs and wide bodies, and generally ill tempered and resentful. Stafford had learned to ride them bareback as a boy, encouraged by Emmett and his father. But there was no great trick to riding Mop or Old Jones other than avoiding a swift, well-placed kick every now and then, which came mostly, Stafford learned, from the mistrust of the horse or the inexperience of the rider.
“Never, ever get between the horse and his feed,” Stafford’s father would say. “Put your face over his head when he’s down like that and he’ll snap up and knock you flat.”
“Watch his ears there, Stafford,” Emmett said. “He’s gonna shy.”
“Don’t turn your back on the horse when you’re trying to harness her. If she’s in a mean mood, she’ll turn around and give you a bite.”
