The Liquor Vicar Page 6

  “Yes, her chest is moving.” Jacquie sounded frightened, but sharp.

  In some disengaged corner of his mind, Vicar noted that she was solid, that she wasn’t going to bolt. It made him feel like he could cope.

  A fire truck arrived. Suddenly, there were men on the scene. Vicar crawled out of the vehicle as a fireman approached. He was white and shaking a little, but he reported, “I couldn’t get a pulse from the driver, but she” — he pointed at the passenger — “is breathing.”

  Both victims were pulled from the wreck. The driver was laid out on a reflective blanket, his body covered from head to toe. Clearly, he was dead. The passenger lay next to the wreck on a backboard, unconscious and wearing a neck brace, two firefighter EMTs standing over her.

  Vicar looked on slightly stunned, with Jacquie right by his side. She was shivering, and he began to feel chilled, too. Slightly shocky, he thought vaguely. He ran to his car to fetch their jackets and handed Jacquie’s to her. It was some bedazzled denim effort too small to keep a Chihuahua warm. Where the hell is the ambulance? He glanced at her and wrapped his arms around her to give her a little warmth.

  “We’re losing her.” There was alarm in the medic’s voice. They attached an artificial respiration bag, and someone jabbed her unconscious body with a syringe.

  Vicar peered up the hill, desperate to catch a glimpse of an approaching ambulance.

  On the scene, there was a flurry of intense activity. The situation was dire. Vicar’s vision swam a little, and he was positive that the woman was getting smaller, shrinking down to the size of a doll next to the huge men in turnout coats.

  He broke away from Jacquie’s wringing grip and ran to the dying woman’s side. He knelt at her head, as far from the medical personnel as he could get, so he wouldn’t interfere with their work. Even so, they tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t budge.

  He grasped the woman’s hand and leaned down, his head lying nearly flat in the grass. He whispered into her ear, coaching her, leading her along, imploring her to keep breathing, to come toward his voice. He wouldn’t let up. The rising tone of his voice conveyed his granite determination. Eventually he started getting hoarse. His mouth was dry and his hands shook, but still he beseeched her to come back, commanded her to grab the reins and ride to the other bank of the dark, churning river in which she struggled. He was Smokey Smith dragging Jimmy Tennant to safety as tracers arced just above their heads.

  After long minutes, one of the medics sat back on his haunches and muttered, “I think we’ve lost her.” The other one fell back on one arm, drained and exhausted from his efforts.

  But Vicar wouldn’t give up. Seeing that they had moved back, he got up on his knees and put his hand to the woman’s forehead. The medics stared at him with pathos, leaving him to go through his process before stating the obvious to him, looking away in sadness and discomfort.

  “You are not leaving. No! You are not fucking leaving!” Vicar made a herculean psychic effort, then punched his free hand in the grass and screamed defiantly. “Nooo!”

  A great rasping breath came out of the formerly lifeless woman. Her eyes fluttered open. The medics looked at Vicar with utter shock for a moment, then launched back into their life-saving procedures without comment.

  Meanwhile, Vicar fell backward and lay head downward in the ditch until he felt the life creeping back into him.

  By the time he got back on his feet, the ambulance had arrived and loaded the woman. They were departing quickly for the hospital. One of the two medics who had been working on her strolled over to Vicar and Jacquie. “I have never seen anything like that in my life,” he said softly. He glanced at the halo on top of the Peugeot, then glanced at Vicar as if seeing the aurora borealis for the first time. Then he shook his head in wonder and departed.

  Vicar and Jacquie stood there silently for a minute or two. Vicar absently toed a piece of shattered signal light that glinted on the ground in the deepening dusk. He was exhausted. Jacquie just stared up at him, her surprised eyes flicking back and forth from one of his eyes to the other. Vicar rasped a sigh, a sound as descriptive as a thousand words.

  After a long, silent pause, Jacquie finally said, “I thought you were supposed to be just a drunk.”

  Twelve / Holy Smoke

  Poutine pushed open the back door with one hand. In the other he held a large pizza box, which he plopped down on the ramshackle staff table. His sweat reeked of rotting soup mixed with a bizarre aroma from the pizza.

  He carelessly thrust several telephone messages, pink paper slips of the variety that large offices had used back in the 1960s, into Vicar’s hand.

  “Jesus, fuck!” Poutine proclaimed coarsely. “I could eat a dead dog’s ass.” He opened the lid of the box.

  “It smells like that’s exactly what you’re going to have,” said Vicar, recoiling. “What in hell is that?” He glanced at the message slips. “And what the hell is all this?” He was genuinely puzzled.

  “I dunno, but some lady’s bin calling all morning. She’s from the TV, dere. She wants to talk to you.”

  Vicar looked at him in bafflement. “What in heaven’s name do they want to talk to me about?” His forehead furrowed, and he tripped on the thought that Randy the Douche might have sicced the press on him.

  “Ahhh!” Poutine exulted with great relish. “Haggis pizza from next door.”

  Jacquie coughed up a mouthful of tea into the sink. A moan arose from her throat.

  “It’s from that, uhh, Eden Burg Pizza, dere.”

  Edinburgh, thought Vicar, unable to decide what about this scenario should jar the most.

  Poutine craned around to Jacquie, peering over his wonkily angled readers. “Whut? It’s good. Have a piece. Be my guess.”

  Guest, guest, GUEST, Vicar’s brain screamed as he shuddered at the thought of putting any of that into his mouth.

  “I got the, uhh, deep-fried Mars Bars for dessert, dere.”

  Vicar and Jacquie backed out of the room as Poutine loudly licked his chops like a cartoon wolf, tucking eagerly into the dire-looking agglomeration of yuck on his brown-paper towel. “Mmm, I love Eye-talian food!”

  Grossed out, Vicar grimaced at Jacquie, who pretended to poke her index finger down her throat, and he retreated to the shiny new phone. He cautiously dialed the number on the slip, racing through possible responses to questions he might be asked.

  “Oh, hello. Are you the same Anthony Vicar who was on the scene at a car accident at Midden Hill near Tyee Lagoon last night?”

  “Uhh, yeah …” he responded inelegantly. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all.

  “Hi, Mr. Vicar, I just wanted to confirm reports made by first responders at the scene that you brought a dead person back to life.”

  “Huhhh?” Mentally, Vicar began slashing through the weeds toward reality.

  “A firefighter called us this morning to report the story. We were able to get three other first responders on the record, claiming almost the same thing. Do you have any comment?”

  Vicar stared at Jacquie, who watched quizzically from a short distance away. “I don’t even know what to say. We, that is, my friend and I” — he glanced up at her — “were first on the scene, and we just tried to help.”

  “The paramedics claim that they had given her up for dead, yet you somehow brought her back.” A keyboard was tapping in the background.

  “Why, that’s insane. I just whispered in her ear to give her encouragement.”

  “Was she conscious at the time that you were speaking to her?”

  “Nooo, I don’t think so,” he responded cautiously. He thought again and said more confidently, “No, she was not.”

  “If she was unconscious, why, then, did you think she might respond positively to you?”

  “Well …” He paused, thinking back to the intense moments surrounding the action. “It seemed like they were losing her. In fact, one of them said, ‘We’re losing her.’ I didn’t think I could do an
y harm at that point, so I jumped in.”

  “What did you intend to do at that moment, Mr. Vicar?”

  He paused for a long time and then said in a measured tone, “Intend? I intended to bring her back.”

  ---

  The crawl at the bottom of the national news the next day said, “Vancouver Island’s ‘Liquor Vicar’ brings woman back from the dead in fatal car crash.” The National Post had a story reporting the event under the headline, “Crash Witness Resurrects Dead Passenger.” The Globe and Mail’s headline was, “Mouth-to-Ear Resuscitation: The Next Frontier?”

  Tony Vicar started his day oblivious to all of it; the Tyee Logger’s front page said, “Clean Fill Wanted.”

  ---

  As the door swung open, Vicar was assaulted by a wall of noise emanating from a large family gathering. It set him back on his heels as the room full of partying people all noticed him at the same time and fairly screeched with excitement. For a second, he felt like a wild animal unveiled on a chat show, staring in confusion at the hubbub that met his sudden appearance. It didn’t seem reasonable for his presence to extort such a response, even if he was bearing wine in the middle of the afternoon.

  The hostess, a white-haired lady who strongly reminded him of Joyce Bulifant, Murray’s wife on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, approached. Her voice was practically a coloratura of apology as she unleashed a torrent of the picayune upon him.

  “Oh my, you’re going to break your neck on that pile of shoes. Sorry about the terrible mess. Such a houseful. The last time we called you, it was a birth-dee party.” She turned her back to him briefly and practically sang, “Everyone, look! It’s our Liquor Vicar from the news. We have a cel-eb-rit-tee.” There was a roar from all quarters and desultory applause.

  She looked around questioningly, speaking to everyone and no one at the same time. “Was it a birth-dee or annivers-ree last time they were here?” Then, turning to Vicar: “I know we had just moved the recliner up from the basement. Jack stubbed his toe on the top stair — it sticks up a bit, and Zoey called from Regina just when it happened, and we couldn’t find the phone. She’s an accountant, so …”

  So? So what? Vicar very quickly realized little that was forthcoming would be germane, so he could tune in or out as he pleased. In fact, no one was paying any mind at all — likely a common occurrence. He decided to recreationally thread-along after the hostess’s chatter as it careered off like a ricocheting bullet.

  “Well, we were down at the shop to get the Jeep. Actually, we started down, but Jack forgot his wallet and we had to turn back. You know, it’s hard to find a safe place to turn around on the highway and you might need to go quite a distance before you can manage it. Oh my, I upset my coffee on the seat and I was sopping it up with a Kleenex I had. Was it in my pocket? Or was it in my purse?” She looked around for a prompt. Finding none at hand, she continued. “One fellow beeped at us and shook his fist.” She pursed her lips and theatrically shivered her shoulders in lurid recollection. “Well, Jack didn’t like that at all and said, ‘Up yours, buddy.’” She lowered her voice down to a mock baritone to mimic her husband’s guttural rumble.

  “Boy, howdy, he was hot under the collar. What were we talking about? Oh yes, the Jeep. That darn thing needed brakes again, and you know it costs a thousand every time you take it in, but you need good brakes in the wet. Uhh, it was raining, too — or was it snowing?”

  She squinted with genuine puzzlement while attempting to recount a tale bereft of cogent arc or even any point, with the maximum number of words possible. Vicar, oddly amused, wryly gave her a title and tagline. Joyce: Supplying Detail Without Plot Since 1950.

  A woman whom Vicar thought resembled the quintessential grand dowager, dour and scowling like a bunged-up Queen Victoria, sat in the corner, swivelling her head from the seaward window to Vicar in the open door and bellowing, “It’s raining!” Vicar gazed at the vast rainforest surrounding them and suppressed a laugh.

  A third lady with jet-black hair and short, severe bangs she may have sheared herself in a moment of self-loathing approached quickly and began nitpicking about the “arctic gale” howling through the open door, the mess tracked in on the mat, and an unidentified smell. “Is someone smoking? Is there a tire on fire outside?” She sniffed Vicar and asked, “Is that Hai Karate?”

  Finally, she fixated on the untidy pile of shoes by the door. Vicar couldn’t discern if she was deliberately trying to make him feel unwelcome, or it was just her natural talent. She got on her hands and knees, making a huge fuss about the disorderly footwear. Vicar’s nearby crotch was at her eye level as her head bobbed back and forth in unintentional pantomime fellatio. Could she really be oblivious to it? Vicar tilted his head quizzically as he watched her peculiar performance.

  In the distance, Dowager yelled out yet again, “It’s raining!”

  Some smartass in the peanut gallery sniped, “Don’t pay attention, Liquor Vicar. We don’t want her to come back to life.”

  Vicar responded with a nauseated smile.

  The good lady Bulifant, oblivious to the faux blow job going on before her eyes, was still droning on about meteorological conditions during the last wine delivery. (“It might have been the one-hundred-year flood.”) Bangs was organizing the shoes, inspecting the soles for mud and twigs, whispering savagely, “Dirty, filthy,” and gnashing her teeth while staring holes into Vicar’s pants. Dowager barked louder still: “It’s raining!” As if her observation was finally going to elicit a response and, at long last, change everything.

  Vicar snapped out of the surreality and said, “Yes, ma’am. It certainly is raining, and I’ve got to get back to the shop in this soup.”

  This jarred everyone out of their individual curious fidget spins. The Bulifantine one piped up in a dog-whistle-pitched voice, “Oooh, I’d better get you some money.”

  At that, Dowager barked, “Get the preacher some money!”

  Vicar began to stammer a mild protest that he was named Vicar, but was not a vicar, but abandoned the attempt amid the sheer bedlam that suddenly erupted.

  Bangs rose from her knees to make a big show of finding her purse. She ran a frantic search pattern of the room, bending over deeply and showing her arse square on to Vicar at least three times in twenty seconds, once even putting a knee up on the arm of the loveseat and lofting her ample posterior to previously unimaginable heights. She narrated aloud every step she took in a raspy whisper, but her purse, it seemed, was nowhere to be found. She breathily muttered that she must take her search into the bedroom — she drew out the word with brazen melodrama — pulled down her bottom lip with her index finger and disappeared. Vicar imagined her leaping off the deck to hide until the terrifying spectre of payment passed, after which she’d leap out naked from the blackberry bushes as he departed. At least she made herself scarce for the time being.

  Joyce-alike had inched conversationally along from weather conditions to event type, which she now felt to a near certainty had been an “annivers-ree.” She passed Vicar a wad of cash, and he quickly counted it. Dowager near the window yelped redundantly, “Get him some money!”

  To Vicar’s surprise, the tip was quite large, and he thanked Mistress Bulifant of the Minneapolis Slaughters sincerely as he departed. As the door swung shut he heard her say, “The last time they were here it was our annivers-ree.”

  The Dowager gutturally moose-called, “Did you give him some money? Millie? Millie? Did you? Did you give him? Did you? Millie? Money! Millie, Money! It’s raining!”

  Thirteen / The Gathering Storm

  By November, the summer’s verdant hues had receded, and the outdoors became something almost blue black, dark and ominous. An uninviting blanket, opaque and clammy, covered the landscape.

  The deeper into the bush, the wetter and darker conditions became; mist clung to the ground like a cloud of cold discontent, and the setting sun was filtered through thick, unrelieved battleship grey. It wasn’t as if it were raining — it
was more like gravity had been shut off, and all moisture from heaven and earth simply floated around, a loosely packed swarm of droplets in a persistent dusk.

  The dim light was so bothersome that Vicar reflexively wanted to swat at it. He shone a bright flashlight out the car window in hopes of locating the correct driveway. Sweat trickled down his back in the humidity, and the reflected glare of condensation from his window pissed him off. He growled. He imagined plunging his cold and clammy Peugeot down a tiny hidden mineshaft, never to be seen again.

  As Vicar finally pulled up to the right house, through the kitchen window he saw Julie Northrop sitting at a table, sipping tea. She waved. He could see she was still wearing a neck brace all this time after the crash. He carried with him a bottle of wine hastily grabbed from a shelf at Liquor as he’d left.

  He knocked politely before opening the door a crack.

  Inside, he looked at Julie appraisingly, forcing himself to slow down and observe her rather than speed through pleasantries. She was drawn and vulnerable, with some slight discoloration of bruising still under her eyes almost four months later. She had suffered a dozen broken bones; her body was a fractured battlefield.

  “When can you go back to school?” Vicar asked, knowing she and her fiancé had been studying in Toronto.

  “I went home to Winnipeg as soon as I could travel. This is Gary’s mom and dad’s house. They asked me to spend some time with them if I could bear it. I might take a year off school, or maybe I’ll quit. I really don’t know.”

  Vicar glanced around the kitchen and imagined how grievously lonely it must be for all of them, here in this little house in the woods cloaked by dark clouds both real and imagined. He paused, gently gathering his words.

  “I, uhhh, I am so sorry that I couldn’t help Gary. He was already gone by the time I reached him.” His mouth partway open, Vicar hemmed and hawed until Julie Northrop spoke.

  “He died instantly, Mr. Vicar. You surely know that. I think he might have been dead before the vehicle stopped rolling. The only thing I can’t understand is why I didn’t die, too.” Julie gazed out the window for a heartbeat and said softly, “It would have been a lot better if I had.”