A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews

Author:Miriam Toews [Toews, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humour
ISBN: 9780307375605
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Knute and Marilyn liked Combine Jo’s idea about the talk and the drink. While Knute was leaving a note for Hosea telling him her friend was in town and they were off to see what they could do about Bill Quinn, Marilyn opened one of his drawers and pulled out an old orange Hilroy scribbler. “Look at this. Remember these?” she said.

“Marilyn!” said Knute. “Don’t go snooping around in his drawers. Put that thing back.”

“Wow,” said Marilyn. “Hosea’s really on the cutting edge, isn’t he? He doesn’t even have an electric typewriter.”

“Let’s go,” said Knute. “C’mon, Josh. S.F. will be very happy to see you.” And they left.

“Bye-bye!” said Combine Jo. “You girls enjoy yourselves. And don’t worry about your boy there, he’ll be fine with Max. Hell, I might go home myself in a while, see if my goddamn bike’s in one piece. First I’ll order this little purple one for S.F. and then she and I could go bike riding together around the dike or around town, somewhere. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

Oh wonderful, thought Knute, cycling on a steep embankment with a crazy old drunk woman. Great. “Okay, Jo, just make sure it has training wheels on it. It needs training wheels.”

“Righto!” said Jo. She ripped out the page from the catalogue and smiled. “Have a good time, ladies,” she said, and waved them away.

“Did you see her looking at us?” said Marilyn.

“What do you mean?”

“The way she was looking at us. Wistfully like. I bet she’d like to join us for a drink. Does she have any friends, Knute, or what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably. Somewhere.”

They walked along Main Street towards the dike road and the hatchery and Max’s place. They took turns giving Josh a piggyback ride.

“You know, it really smells bad in this town,” said Marilyn.

“Well, it’s spring,” said Knute, “that’s all the fertilizer thawing, you know, shit on the fields.”

“Oh. Real shit?”

“Yeah. Well, not human shit—animal.”

“But real shit, not processed or packaged or anything?”

“Right. Raw animal shit. It might be liquidized or something, I don’t know. Because they spray it on. You know, like hose it on.”

“For fertilizer, eh?”

“Yup. It’s the best thing. Crops, crops, crops. This high.”

“Wow. But what about afterwards? You know, when we eat them, the crops. Fecal residue.”

“We can’t tell.”

“Really? We’re eating animal shit and we don’t know it?”

“Well, we know it, I guess, we just don’t think about it.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t stink now. There should be no fertilizer on the fields now because it would have been cut down with the crops, you know, reaped, in the fall. Wouldn’t the farmers wait until spring has really sprung to put fresh shit on the fields? Like just before they plant or sow or whatever it’s called?”

“Seed,” said Knute. “And it’s not reaped, it’s harvested.”

“Seed, yeah,” said Marilyn.

“I don’t know when they do it,” said Knute.

“Well, spring, obviously, Knute, that’s when crops are planted. That’s when they need to be fertilized.”

“I don’t know, they could be perennials.

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