The Life of Hope Read Free Page A

sky, and it hadn’t occurred to her that the crippled girl might require assistance.)
    A church bell began to chime in the distance, and Joseph Hope absentmindedly counted along. When it reached nine he scowled, and with the tenth toll Hope rapped his tiny knuckles against the pane with annoyance. At any moment the crippled girl’s father would arrive in his buggy. (The red girl had helped the other after all, and now the crippled girl was bare-chested. For some reason the crippled girl turned away in order to pull down her bloomers, and Joseph saw a shallow and shadowed posterior emerge. She was naked now, except for her boots. The crippled girl spread her arms toward Heaven, the elbow joints bending awkwardly backward. The red girl pointed at the cripple’s boots and laughed.)
    “Silly,” muttered Joseph, in reference to any number of things, not just the red girl’s adolescent scorn. Suddenly Joseph haddesire so strong that it hurt, made him spit out air and fog the window. Joseph Benton Hope realized that his erection had vanished, the Spirit gone uselessly elsewhere. He also realized that he could hear the sound of horses’ hooves. Joseph Benton Hope wanted to go fishing.
    Joseph spoke aloud, saying, “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are buffeted, and have no common dwellingplace …”
    Joseph Benton Hope decided to leave Lowell, Massachusetts.
    The Hoper
    Hope, Ontario, 1983
    Wherein our Biographer acquires the Tool whereby he might practice the Art of the Angle
.
    Across from the Square were the shops of Hope. There was, among other things, Delanoy’s IGA, which would supply my grocery needs, not that I have many; a liquor store (where I hoped to open a charge account); two of the three taverns spotted the night before; a butcher’s shop, a bank, a bakery, and something called Edgar’s Bait, Tackle and Taxidermy.
    Edgar’s display window was a strange thing to behold. A handwritten sign taped to the glass proclaimed LIVE WORMS, CRAWLERS, MINNOWS. The tackle portion of his trade was represented by an assortment of hooks and lures that appeared to have been flung in angrily. There were any number of stuffed fish, a stuffed skunk, and then, as if to show that he didn’t merely stuff trifles, there was a stuffed bear’s foot. Give me a bigger window, Edgar seemed to be saying, and boy you’d really see something! Edgar’s display window also inexplicably contained a violin, a dressmaker’s dummy and a Ouija board.
    Inside the shop there was comparatively little. Almost all ofEdgar’s stock seemed to be in the window. There were a few rods lined up along a wall, and there was a long counter with some books on it, scuzzy mimeographed things with cardboard covers, obviously written by and for the locals—
What to Look Out For at Lookout Lake
, by Lt. Col. Alan Skinner (ret’d),
Hunting & Killing Grizzlies
, by S. and L. McDiarmid and
Fishing for Ol’ Mossback
, by Gregory Opdycke.
    Behind this counter stood Edgar.
    Upon seeing Edgar I wondered why the shop wasn’t called Edgar’s Bait, Tackle, Taxidermy and Axe-murder. He was as evil-looking a man as I’ve ever seen, his head bald, his face covered by a prickly black beard. Edgar was also immense, a good half foot above six feet, muscled like a mountain. I guessed he was somewhere around forty-five years old, but the T-shirt he had on, several sizes too small for his chest and arms, bore the name of a popular heavy metal band. Edgar stared at me as if he meant to damn me to Hell. He removed something from his mouth, maybe the butt of a cigar, probably the leg of some cute forest-dwelling animal, and barked, “Yeah?”
    I wanted to flee, but somehow I found the courage to tell him, “I need a Hoper.”
    Edgar stared at me for several long moments. He appeared to process the information slowly, reflecting on each of my words. Then he reached down below the counter and produced the item in question.
    A Hoper is about the