The Next Rainy Day

By Philip David Alexander

Long-listed for the 2006 Re-Lit Award for Best Novel

Grant McRae has a loving wife, a healthy son, and a new career with the local police department. Bert Commerford has a pretty good life too, as the proud owner of Commerford & Sons Auto Service. But Bert’s sons are polar opposites: Travis is a budding junior hockey star, and Russell is a thug loaded with resentment for Bert. When tragedy befalls the Commerfords, Bert finds himself too haunted by his murky past to stop his life from buckling. Russell leaves home and almost immediately finds disaster as his path intersects with Constable McRae’s.

Told from alternating perspectives, The Next Rainy Day is a fast-moving exploration of loss and of finding hope in the wake of personal disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Nov 26, 2005
• ISBN: 9781554886555

Philip David Alexander

Philip David Alexander's fiction has appeared in several literary journals and magazines, including Front & Centre, The Circle Magazine, and Storyglossia. His work The Next Rainy Day was optioned for a feature film. Alexander lives and writes in Toronto.

Book preview

The Next Rainy Day

For Sherri

The

Next

Rainy

Day

a novel

Philip

David

Alexander

Copyright © Philip David Alexander, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Barry Jowett

Copy-editor: Andrea Pruss

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer:Webcom

Permission for excerpt from Absolution by John Smolens granted by the author.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Alexander, Philip David

The next rainy day / Philip David Alexander.

ISBN-10: 1-55002-593-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-593-4

I. Title.

PS8601.L345N49 2005 C813′.6 C2005-903981-7

1 2 3 4 5 09 08 07 06 05

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

www.dundurn.com

The Next Rainy Day

May your eyes be open day and night toward this house, the place where you promised to set your name, and may you heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place.

— 2 Chronicles 6:20

He wants his life back. Or, perhaps I should say, he wants the life he believed he had back. See, I stole it.

— Absolution, by John Smolens

Bert Commerford

There's no halo around my head. I want to be damn clear about that. And I'll tell it straight because that's the only way I know. A lot of people would throw some kind of slant on it, some psychobabble that lets them put the blame on someone or something else. But I don't go for that. And I'll tell my version because that's the only one I truly know. There won't be any of this business where I try to get inside someone else's head. I hate that shit.

There's no way around it: things happened that put my family on a bus ride to hell, and there were times when it seemed like it had no brakes. And we crashed slowly. We didn't just slam into an overpass and twist and shred; we had three bad collisions, with plenty of time in between each one. I can't say that I was the only one in the driver's seat, but I took my turn, pedal to the metal as they say.

These days I watch a lot of those TV talk shows that start around 10:00 a.m. and run back to back until damn near dinnertime. I see all these losers willing to air their dirty laundry in front of an audience — usually of an audience of slobs who should be at work, but we won't go there. The so-called guests sit up on stage, waiting for the mike to hover in front of them so they can cry and blame their fuck-ups on Mom, Dad, a perverted uncle, or the government, or just society in general. What they don't realize is they're just garden-variety morons with daytime TV problems and no one really cares about the husband cross-dressing or that the wife has declared herself a lesbian after thirty years of marriage. I watch them because their lives are coming unglued and there's something oddly gratifying about how seriously they take their pathetic, self-made woes, tabloid bullshit. I've drafted up a couple letters to some TV talk shows in Toronto and New York.

I basically ask, You want a story about a family mess? A real tragedy? Sit back and read this. Those letters sit stamped and ready to go. We'll see what happens. Some days it seems like a great idea. Other days I figure, why lower myself.

It's tough to know the best place to start and what to tell and what to leave out. I mean, there are some things that I'm accused of having done that I'm still not so sure about. I've got no way of confirming it. So I'll tell my side of things using my head and my heart, but mainly my gut.

A few years ago I had a pretty decent lot in life. Things weren't perfect, but we got by and everyone was in one piece. I had an auto garage that I took over from my father. He'd had the business for years, built it from the ground up. I had a good, solid wife and two sons, both full of piss and vinegar. Travis, my youngest, channelled his energy into hockey. The other, Rusty, old enough to know better, channelled it into whatever was closest: cheap whisky, women (mostly underage), bar brawls. Sure, I had worries. Who in hell doesn't? But one morning not too long ago, I woke and felt change in the air, and in my gut.

I'm not one for remembering dates. I used to get in hot water all the time for forgetting birthdays and anniversaries. But I remember October 8, 1993, very clearly. That's the day when things started to slide. I got up that morning before dawn because Travis had a pre-season game over in St. Catharines. I left the house just after six and crossed the road to my garage, Commerford & Sons Auto Service. It was cold as hell; I remember turning on the little electric heater in the office. I was out of cigarettes, so I'd planned to just dart across the road, grab a pack, and get back over to the house to wake the boys and whip up breakfast. I helped myself to a pack of Export As and some gum from the little confection stand we kept in the office. I left a note for Vic, my mechanic and right-hand man, reminding him that Emily Stewart was bringing in her Toyota for a tune-up sometime before lunch. And then I locked up. The funny thing is, I also remember turning toward the house after locking the office door. I stood there and admired the place, nodded and approved of the tall, rock-solid Victorian home where my wife and boys were still in their beds. I gloated a little, I guess. The guys in town at the Copper Kettle Diner would tease me when I dropped by for coffee. They'd get a kick out of telling me that most guys had to commute to work, but me, I crossed a two-lane road to get to work but commuted to get a cup of coffee. They're as good a bunch of guys as you'll meet. When things really came off the rails, they were there for me, like a family.

Let's get back to that cold gray morning, though. I finished gawking at my home and made a quick check left and right for traffic. There was never much on our road at that time of day, especially on weekends. Over on my left, near the flashing red light above the stop sign at Dunn Road, there were two township trucks. I could just barely make out the little Battleford Township coat of arms on the driver's-side door of the smaller one. Three workers were moving about, one of them with what turned out to be surveying equipment under his arm. I checked my watch and wandered down to see them. Chuck Wood was the assistant works department foreman. He was standing with a set of plans and municipal zoning maps under the arm of his canvas jacket. Back when Chuck used to drive a cab down in Niagara, I serviced it for him. When he got the job with the township he was key in getting me the contract to service their fleet. He wrote a letter to the mayor and bragged about my great service and the quality of my work. And I had that contract until Charlie Dent lost the mayor's seat to that asshole Gavin Bascomb. Anyway, I reached Chuck and greeted him with the usual, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Wood." He didn't smile. Just wasn't himself. I asked him if he was milking the township for some overtime, doing some work that could have been done on a weekday. That didn't get a smile either. Traffic lights? More of my tax money being spent, I asked him. He just shook his head and told me to stop joking around, he was freezing his ass off and didn't want to be out on the weekend. He complained that the contractor for the township kept on wanting stuff double- and triple-checked. I asked him what contractor and he just laughed. And then I think he clued in that I wasn't pulling his chain.

You mean you honestly don't know?

No, Chuck, so why don't you tell me because I'm getting nervous here.

Chuck looked confused. He waved over one of the other men, an acne-faced guy in overalls.

Lenny, notices went out, right?

The guy looked at me and looked back to Chuck and said, Yeah, of course. At least three went out.

And there's been no objections?

That's how I found out that plans had been issued and approved and that Commerford Road, a road where my family had lived and done business for two generations, was going to be cut off. Truncated was the word Chuck used. Here's the thing: Crandy Manufacturing was halfway through building a new plant about three miles north of me. And the township had decided to bypass Commerford Road. They were going to take Dunn Road and build it into an overpass. The planners figured it would better serve the tractor-trailers hauling to and from the new factory. Besides, there was nothing much on Commerford Road except for my home and business, a couple of houses, and an abandoned soybean farm.

There was an old widow named May Bennett down our road about a quarter-mile. She was our closest neighbour. My boy Rusty used to cut her grass in the summer. She'd flip him five bucks for his trouble. Once Rusty got older and more interested in stealing and busting skulls around town young Travis took over. My wife, Wanda, would bring her baked goods once a week and would even clean up her kitchen now and again. We helped May out as best we could. May was losing her marbles, though. She chased her cats with a broom, called my sons by different names all the time, and wore a tattered old housecoat all day, every day. I knew she was awake because I could hear her nail-on-chalkboard voice yelling at one of her cats. I wandered down there and said hello, and she took a moment to figure out who I was. Her eyes seemed glazed, and I caught a whiff of her sour odour from two feet away. She complained that her kids were out of control and costing her money. She grumbled about having too many children.

What children are we talking about here, May? I asked.

Those ones, she screeched, pointing at two scruffy-looking cats crouched like oversized hamsters near her mailbox.

I changed the subject, asked her if she knew about the plans to rebuild Dunn Road and bypass our place. She went inside and came back out with a notice from the township. She handed it to me and said that her eyes were getting bad so she hadn't read it. She told me her son had warned her about the changes. I felt a knot form in my gut as I looked at the notice. There it was in black and white.

I stormed back to the house. I'll admit that I was fuming. I kept my eyes on our front hallway light, which was on. I tripped and stumbled into the ditch, I was walking so fast. That just got me wound up even more. I damn near ripped the door off its hinges rushing inside. Travis hadn't seen the notice before. I could always tell if Travis was lying to me, and he was clean this time. I asked where his brother was and he pointed upstairs. I took the stairs two at a time and pushed my way into Rusty's bedroom. He was on his back, lying on the floor wearing ripped boxer shorts that showed part of his business just hanging there. He was smoking a cigarette and listening to the headphones. I plucked them off his head and they got tangled up in his hair.

Hey, old man, that fucking hurt, he told me.

I told him to watch his mouth, buy some new shorts, and go to the barber. And then I held the notice right in front of his eyes.

Recognize this, boy?

He took it and studied it. A smug little grin appeared across his face.

No, first I've seen of it.

If I find out you're shitting me, Russ …

He gave it back and swore up and down he'd never seen it, hadn't collected the mail in ages. That added up. He'd become a lazy bastard the last few months. The effort of walking to the mailbox would've been too much for him.

Wanda was standing in the hallway, near the top of the staircase. I closed Rusty's door and waited for her to speak. She was still a very pretty woman: her long brown hair had taken on just a strand or two of gray, and her solid farm girl face had taken on a fair bit of weight, but remained fresh and wholesome despite her weak heart. She didn't speak. She looked at the floor instead, gripped the top of the handrail until her knuckles went white. I knew by the look on her face.

For God's sake, Wanda, why? Why would you keep this from me?

She told me she was worried that it would kill me. She dreaded a long and ugly fight with the township. She stood there, close to tears, arguing her points: business at the service station was slow, Travis was playing more and more games, and maybe we needed to move closer to a larger town or city. She sniffled and said that she felt isolated, had hinted as much recently, but I had ignored her or just didn't clue in. There was a letter from the township on the way outlining a compensation package, and once she'd gotten the details she had planned to sit me down and show me the offer. She was confident it would be a generous one. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out two notices from the township. I hit the roof. I mean I really unloaded. I called the whole thing deceitful and pounded my fist on the wall. There I was busting my ass and trying to make the business work and my family was running interference, rolling the dice with our future. Russ came out of his room and stood between Wanda and me. Russ had taken to doing this sort of thing, poking his nose in where it didn't belong. He knew damn well I'd never hit his mother, but he'd always shove his nose in and act like he was protecting her. In return, Wanda would go to bat for him regardless of how much he fucked up. They'd become a team. I realized it as I stood there shaking my foolish head that day.

"They're rerouting the road that brings in the traffic, our business!" I said.

Rusty said, "What business?"

I stepped toward him and flashed him a warning with my eyes and teeth. Wanda wedged herself between us.

It was my idea, Bert. Please, let's sit and talk like adults.

When the smoke had cleared Wanda and me sat and drank coffee at the kitchen table. I'd originally searched the back of the kitchen cupboard and found some whisky. I kept it there as a just in case.Wanda said there was no such thing as just in case, once you quit that was it. And she said she hid those notices for that very reason. She figured I'd hit the bottle for a few days upon getting the news, and then I'd dry up and become obsessed, run myself into the grave over getting vengeance on Bascomb and his idiots at Town Hall. I put the bottle back in the cupboard and we brewed coffee. She cried her eyes out, told me she felt really stuck, that it turned her stomach to keep a secret from me, especially one that would leave me looking like a fool. She pleaded for me to roll over, put my hands up in surrender because there would be a good chunk of change from the township. There was no way in hell I was leaving my home and business. She'd always talked about moving to the city, and I guess she saw this as her chance. Things had been slow, and I think Wanda thought that I'd see the compensation offer and say what the hell. She saw the whole mess as a chance to have the decision made for us.

There wasn't much relaxing, and certainly little sleeping for the rest of the weekend. Wanda moped around, stopping her routine now and again to say how sorry she was, but she had meant well. Travis hitched a ride to his hockey game. Rusty took off somewhere. There was no use asking Rusty where he was going or what time he'd get home. Travis was fifteen, level-headed and easygoing. He had no problems with curfews and pay phones and notes left on the kitchen table telling us where he was. Rusty, on the other hand, was nineteen, bullheaded, and played his hand close to his vest. He kept the schedule of a damn barn owl: up all night and home to his nest at dawn. I spent most of that weekend alternating between being angry with Wanda and realizing that she had a point. The township had changed. Business was slowing to a crawl. And she was right; I would have become a man possessed if I'd seen those notices. Jesus, I was already planning my strategy with Mayor Bascomb on Monday morning. Here's the thing: deciding to move on based on money and the needs of my family was one thing. Allowing the mayor and some factory to muscle into my backyard and tell me when it was time to move, well, that was another thing. And I already felt like an idiot. I'd seen the township trucks buzzing around the area and thought nothing of it. Gus and the boys at the diner had said things like Well, things are really changing and We feel bad for you, Bert.

Hell, I thought they were just sorry about how tough it was getting to make ends meet.

So I sat and I waited for Monday. And I fumed. And I decided to fight the rezoning and truncating as hard as I possibly could. There's nothing like being hoodwinked to piss a guy off.

Looking back on it I should've known it would be a short fight. I got to the township offices at 8:30 on Monday morning. I sat in the foyer and watched a frumpy woman I'd never seen before open up the switchboard in between sips of coffee. At exactly 8:45 she looked at me and said, Can I help you, sir?

I asked if I could see Mayor Bascomb. She studied me like I was insane, as if I'd asked to speak to the Prime Minister. It used to be I could wander into the old town hall and go straight to Chuck Dent's office, sit with him and shoot the shit for ten minutes. The new offices were larger, no doubt built with the idea that the township would become a town, and maybe even city one day. The receptionist had a little headset on. She'd taken the mouthpiece and pushed it closer to her lips. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she eventually looked at me and said, Can I tell the mayor your name?

Bert Commerford.

The mayor's assistant came to fetch me and led me to his office. I didn't know her, either. She walked like she was late for a train, and I followed her down a long tunnel of wallpapered hallway. There was lots of art on the walls, ugly stuff that looked like someone had drunk paint and then puked it all over a canvas. The old town hall had some nice Group of Seven prints on the walls. I wondered what happened to those paintings as we neared the mayor's office.

Gavin Bascomb's father had been an accountant who moved in from Toronto and set up shop in town. He was a typical city man. He liked to talk and had an opinion on everything. When your turn came to talk he would glaze over and pretty much ignore you until you stopped and he could shoot his mouth off some more. Gavin was more polite and — I had thought — more patient than his old man. He'd moved out of Toronto when he was a boy, helping to shed the city habits and arrogance. Gavin was a grade-A student in both elementary and high school. He came back to town after he graduated university. He worked for the local paper for a while, took over his father's business when the old windbag died. He ran for mayor at the tender age of thirty-two. He was quick on his feet and had promised to revitalize the area if he was granted a chance in the mayor's seat. Once he took office he immediately began inviting businesses to set up in town, enticing builders to plan subdivisions, fast-tracking their permits. He'd already made some enemies, especially among the old-timers.

He invited me to sit down. A quick but firm handshake, no offer of a coffee or glass of water. He wanted to keep it business, so I did the same. I told him I'd never received the notices. He dug his chin into his neck and frowned, as if this were impossible. It wasn't long before we were arguing. His angle was to lecture about the small changes and adjustments I had to make for the long-term economic good of the community. He spoke to me like I was a dumb-ass. He assumed that because I fixed cars and pumped gas for a living I was simple, maybe plain stupid. He stood and asked me to leave when I pointed out that they were all in bed together: him, Crandy Manufacturing, the builders, and the newcomers to town. He said the municipality had done its due diligence in sending out the notices, and if I hadn't received them it was too bad; construction was set to begin within two weeks. We continued to squabble about it, but I could see his father in him. I saw that he wasn't even listening.