Guy Vanderhaeghe - Things As They Are

ACCLAIM FOR
Things As They Are

Vanderhaeghe creates vivid, credible characters. [These stories] draw the reader into the dramatic tensions that arise from people living at cross purposes. Vanderhaeghe is an important voice.

Vancouver Sun

Guy Vanderhaeghe is extraordinarily adept at taking readers beyond the visible surface and into the emotional heart of his characters. His vivid prose takes the reader into the skin of his creations.

NOW

[Vanderhaeghes stories showcase] a flexible and authentic narrative voice; complex narrative strategy; precise rendition of place, time and mood; broad and penetrating intellect; generous and incisive wit; and remarkably felicitous language. He brings readers closer to the pathos of human existence. The particularity and precision of Vanderhaeghes characterization paradoxically opens onto universal issues. Penetrating and moving.

Event

A solid performance from one of our most reliable fiction writers.

Winnipeg Free Press

Things As They Are is impressively varied, ten pieces that capture the absurdity of the human condition, yet retain a compassion that gives them depth.

Toronto Sun

Vanderhaeghes talent for seeing things as they are keeps Things As They Are from the grimness its themes might suggest. There is pain here, to be sure, and an aching awareness of our lack of generosity to each other, but its leavened with a high-spirited and unselfconscious heartiness that makes those conditions only a part of the broader range of human experience.

Ottawa Citizen

Things As They Are is a terrific collection, full of memorable and moving characters vividly rendered.

Broadway Magazine

BOOKS BY GUY VANDERHAEGHE

FICTION
Man Descending (1982)
The Trouble With Heroes (1983)
My Present Age (1984)
Homesick (1989)
Things As They Are (1992)
The Englishmans Boy (1996)
The Last Crossing (2002)

PLAYS
I Had a Job I Liked. Once. (1991)
Dancocks Dance (1995)

Copyright 1992 by G & M Vanderhaeghe Productions Inc.

Trade paperback with flaps edition published 1992
First Emblem Editions publication 2004

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Vanderhaeghe, Guy, 1951
Things as they are / Guy Vanderhaeghe.

Originally published: Toronto : M&S, 1992.
Short stories.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-572-4
I. Title.

PS8593.A5386T45 2004 C813.54 C2003-907280-0

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

The events and characters in these stories are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or happenings is coincidental.

SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

EMBLEM EDITIONS
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street,
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com/emblem

v3.1

To Morris Wolfe

with thanks for help and
encouragement from the beginning

KING CALLED ME LONG DISTANCE from the city again last night. He said, Theyre warning me to stay clear of Putt N Fun Town, leave off playing the mini-golf.

King, I said.

I aint going to do it, he said.

Whatever you think is best, King, I said.

Just so you know whats really going on here, he declared and hung up.

King is my brother. Hes seven years older than me, turned seventy-eight last January. We were raised in Advance and both of us lived our whole lives here, until recent circumstances took King to the city.

Everybody in Advance knows King Walsh. For seventy years more heads were wagged in this town over King Walshs mistakes than any other bakers dozen of ordinary men. But King got forgiven his little errors, people liked him all the better for making them, and it didnt hurt either that brother had a smile could light up a coal bin. However, the difference between an old mans mistakes and a young mans is that the ones the old man makes hes probably got to live with the rest of his life. Kings learning that now, living his big mistake, the one thats trapped him in a basement suite in his sons house there in the city.

Albert Walker met up with King and me that day in the beer parlour and talked us into going along with him as moral support to The Senior Silver Jets Wednesday afternoon Singles Dance. So moral support sat on tin chairs watching a couple dozen old widows dancing the foxtrot with each other and throwing us boys the hopeful come hither looks. I been a bachelor all my life, and like it that way, so I kept my eyes mostly wherever theirs werent.

Tell the truth she was a pretty lean stag line, consisting of just four old bucks King, Albert Walker, me, and Rudy Schmidt, who was acting as master of ceremonies because hed been a cattle auctioneer before he retired and so was accustomed to public speaking. Now Rudy is a professional when it comes to talking but even he cant hold a candle to Albert Walker. King was catching the brunt of it, that endless rambling on about this and that and a hundred per cent of nothing. But all of a sudden, out of the blue, Albert says something of interest. King, remember that night you danced every dance on one leg at Kinbrae School?

King said he sure as hell did.

The summer of 1935 was what they were talking about, the summer King broke his ankle, the summer I was fifteen and King had me drive his car out to Kinbrae School on a soft, starry night because he couldnt work the clutch with a cast on. My brother was twenty-two that summer, his hair red and full as a roosters comb, and him a one-legged dancing fool. That night in Kinbrae he danced with every woman that didnt drive him off with a stick when he hopped up to her. Thirty-three answered the call not many women ever refused King. His chums slung his arms over their shoulders and poured rye into him between tunes and the band agreed to play through the midnight lunch so King didnt cool down, go stiff, and bind up. Come two in the morning there were still more than twenty ladies, some old enough to have been his mother, lined up for a second go around. Death before dishonour, King said and jolted through the entire mixed assortment. Last partner of the ball was Elsie Macintosh. The sun was standing in the window and her anxious father in the door when the band collapsed from exhaustion and the curtain came down on the spectacle. King married Elsie two years later. I wonder how many times she wished she could have took that final dance back.