Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler Page A

piglets, then charging forward, swerving into the 243.
    Moses helped Strawberry to his feet and led him back into The Caboose.
    â€œWhatever you’re drinking will be good enough for me, Mister Man.”
    Strawberry, blue-eyed, tall and stringy, all jutting angles, was missing two fingers, a souvenir of his days in the bobbin mill, and had no upper teeth. Moses drank with him and the others until two A.M. Then Strawberry, insisting that Moses was now too drunk to drive, settled him into his Ford pickup and took him to his house on the hill to spend the night on the sofa. No sooner had they staggered inside than Strawberry dug out his shotgun, rolled back out on to his rotting porch and fired a couple of rounds into the air.
    â€œWhat are you shooting at?” Moses asked, startled.
    â€œIf I lived in some big-shot apartment building in the city like you probably do, Mister Man, all I’d have to do is drop my boots on the floor and the neighbours would know I was home safe. Here I fire my shotgun so’s they know I’m back and they don’t need to worry no more. I may be stupid, but I ain’t crazy.”
    The next morning Strawberry’s wife made them bacon and eggs and then they moved on to Chez Bobby, having agreed to have justone for the ditch before Moses proceeded to Montreal. Three hours passed before Strawberry suddenly leaped to his feet. “Shit,” he said, “we got to get to Cowansville.”
    Strawberry, charged with drunken driving a month earlier, was due to appear in court that afternoon. First, however, he took Moses to The Snakepit, a bar around the corner from the courthouse, where Bunk, Sneaker, Rabbit, Legion Hall, and some of the others were already waiting. By the time Strawberry’s supporters, Moses still among them, drifted into the courtroom, they were quarrelsome drunk. They waved and whistled and hollered imprecations at the first sight of Strawberry standing there, grinning.
    â€œOrder, order in the court,” the judge called out.
    â€œI’ll have a hamburger,” Strawberry said.
    â€œI could give you ninety days for that.”
    â€œThat’s nothing.”
    â€œHow about a hundred and twenty?”
    Fortunately, Strawberry’s lawyer intervened at this point. He was the judge’s nephew and the local Liberal party bagman. Strawberry got off with a suspended sentence and everybody repaired to Gilmore’s Corner to celebrate. They made three more pit stops before they ended up at The Beaver Lodge in Magog. “My great-grandaddy Ebenezer used to drink here,” Strawberry told Moses, pointing out a sign over the bar that had been salvaged from the original hotel, destroyed by fire in 1912.
    WM. CROSBY’S HOTEL
    The undersigned, thankful for past favours
    bestowed upon this
    LONG-ESTABLISHED HOTEL
    is determined to conduct this establishment in a
    manner that will meet the approbation of the public,
    and therefore begs a continuance of Public Patronage.
    REFRESHMENTS SERVED AT ANY HOUR
    OF DAY OR NIGHT
    Wm. Crosby
    Proprietor
    The next afternoon Moses phoned Henry Gursky, in the Arctic, and borrowed enough money to buy the cabin high in the woods overlooking Lake Memphremagog.
    Strawberry, Moses discovered, painted houses between drinks. He could also be driven to cut wood or plough snow. But, for the most part, he was content to hibernate through the winter on the fat of his welfare cheque. “Hey, I coulda been rich, a big landowner,” Strawberry once said, “if not for what my crazy great-grandaddy done. Old Ebenezer Watson gave up the bottle for God, a big mistake, joining up with a bunch of religious nuts called the Millenarians. Eb lost just about everything, his life included. All that was left was some ninety acres of the old family farm. It went to Abner, my grandaddy.”
    Strawberry failed to turn up the next afternoon. Moses was seated alone when one of the rich cottagers stumbled into The