When the Saints Read Free Page A

children. She’d knit little leg warmers while she was waiting for customers, had a big stockpile ready in case anyone in town gave birth. “Need a light for that, Baby Bear?” she’d ask, stretching over the counter with her Zippo. She had a script for everything. If someone asked how she was doing, she’d say, “Just another day in paradise.” If a man purchased a lottery ticket, she’d say, “If you win, I’m single.” Every time. And then she’d laugh so hard it loosened the phlegm in her throat.
    The grass is soggy after endless cold spring rains, so I lay my jacket down to sit on. I used to come down here all the time for no reason other than to watch the eddies twirl. Once in a while some flotsam would flash by, like a Dr. Pepper can or a piece of car body. I’d stay until the tide went out and there was just a big bowl of mud. Insects would crawl up and down my arms and I’d pretend I was just another blade of grass.
    I tried to disappear on a city bench once, but my face must have a sign on it. Some woman tapped me on the knee and wanted to know if I’d seen her ghost. I told her I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about, and she lowered her voice and asked if a woman who looked identical to her went by about twenty minutes ago, perhaps on a bicycle with lightning streaks down the side and a white basket. She took a pen out of her purse and drew me a picture of herself.
    At least in small towns, everyone knows who the crazies are and what their deal is. Someone new walks into a corner storeand they get the lowdown right away: “Don’t say hello to Angus out there or he’ll make you listen to him play the spoons for hours.” In the city, crazies float around like balloons. You don’t know one till she’s hovering over you on a park bench.
    There’s something different in the air here now. When we were kids, the breeze always smelled like the car factory. Maybe it’s shut down, because all that’s wafting my way is the scent of the pines on the other side of the river. Daddy used to hide out in those woods when the law was on him. I asked Ma once what he did to pass the time and she said something like, “Oh, he’s making sure all the birds know he’s the king, getting drunk and shitting in the river, probably dreaming up a whole new way to make me wish I was dead.”
    When I was three years old, I tagged along with Bird as he went trudging in to look for Daddy. He had to tell him that our furnace broke down and Ma needed money to get it fixed. My legs were bare and we didn’t get far before some wild animal sunk its teeth into my shin. Bird told everyone it was a king cobra, but it was probably a muskrat.
    I squint in the other direction across the old bridge, but I can barely make out the few cars and trucks rumbling through the morning haze.
    Grandma Jean, who is my mother’s mother, always said that the town of Solace River was a waste of nails from the start, that its sole purpose was to collect assholes. She used to tell us stories about Irish rumbles, grown men pummelling each other over who owned what, everybody taking sides. Her father, Cleary Foster, was a brawler who challenged boxing champs from as faraway as Boston to street fights. He’d go around begging shopkeepers to put up the train fare, and when the boxer left Solace River with his face punched through his head, they’d get their money back and more. There were legendary parties every time he won a fight. Cleary himself would preside, buying rounds and throwing bills around, placing small children on his biceps and hoisting them in the air.
    After his bare-knuckle days, Cleary bought an automobile, the first Nova Scotian to own one outside of Halifax. He’d drive it around to different towns looking for barroom fights, but no one would take him on. Eventually, he got depressed and crashed the car on purpose, fizzled out his days drinking mouthwash and yelling at the radio announcer. Grandma Jean’s