Waiting for Joe by Sandra Birdsell

once said, when Joe wondered why his father did not dress like other fathers.
    Alfred had sensed Joe looking at him and his mouth began to work. “I’ll be right back,” he said and took off for the entrance of the Fuel and Supply store, returning moments later looking as though he’d won an argument with himself.
    They continued on to A&W on the opposite side of the street, where several cars cruised the lot in search of a vacant spot. A city transit bus lumbered by, its sides painted with the maple leaf flag in celebration of Canada’s Centennialyear. Flags hung limply from flagstaffs on buildings, and the light standards along Portage Avenue. Curlicues of decorative lights unfurled across the street and met at the median in the shape of a maple leaf. Sometimes after Alfred had gone to work at the nightclub, Joe and Verna would go for a walk to the intersection to see the Centennial lights along Portage Avenue, the icy white lit-up curlicues, the red maple leaves hanging at the centre of the street repeated into infinity.
    “It might be some time before we even get near the door,” Alfred warned as they took their place at the end of a lineup of people hoping to get into the restaurant.
    The rhythmic boom of rock music reverberated in Joe’s breastbone from car radios turned up high and to the same station, as though this had been agreed upon. The music broke off suddenly to the familiar voices of children singing the Centennial song.
Cann-aaa-daa- … we are twenty million
. If I had a dime for every time that song was played, I’d be a rich man, Cecil had said, and he and Joe had tried to calculate how much money, at ten cents a play, Bobby Gimby would make in a single day.
    As the people in front of them failed to move forward and the lineup grew longer, Alfred’s face became pale and slick, and Joe knew his father would soon lose patience. Especially over the rowdiness of several young men who had swarmed out of line and now milled about the entrance. From the Brazilian soccer team, Joe heard someone say. One of them managed to push his way into the restaurant and they all began shouting their food orders to him. Glass shattered and Joe turned to see that a waitress had dropped a tray loaded with mugs of root beer. Car horns blared,there were catcalls and whistling as the waitress skated to the order window and took down a broom and dustpan clamped to the wall.
    A man who’d been leaning against a car came toward them, walking carefully, as though he was on a balance beam. He was slight and wiry, wearing white jeans and a baseball cap, and a yellow shirt printed with tropical birds.
    The city was overrun with similar lithe, cat-like men who spoke Portuguese or Spanish, and with American-sounding athletes whose twangy voices Joe had overheard in the drugstore. And myriad volunteers wearing colour-coded pants and shirts, sunburned spectators, evangelists. People had driven for miles to attend the Pan American Games and all the campgrounds were filled with trailers and tents. Prostitutes and pimps mingled among the patrons at the Club Baghdad where Alfred was custodian.
    “Hola,” the man said to Alfred and lifted his baseball cap, pulled his fingers through his dark slicked-back hair, and jammed it back on.
    “How’s it going, fella?” Alfred asked.
    Cheers rose up now as several people were allowed into the restaurant.
    “It’s like this all over. It’s very difficult to get something to eat,” the man said. His eyes slid from Alfred to Joe, and then back to Alfred. He rubbed his chin absently and then again looked at Joe. Joe braced himself for what he expected would be the usual embarrassing comment about the colour of his eyes.
    “Is this your grandson?” he asked Alfred, and Joe knew that when Alfred explained he was his father, the man would say one thing while his eyes would say another.When Joe was born Alfred had been forty-four years old, and Joe blamed his father’s age for his own