Hayride

Fiction by ​​Joe Davies

​I’ll call him “Peter,” since he told me he doesn’t want his or anyone else’s real name to appear here—what follows being all true, unspectacular as it is—true, at least, in the sense that Peter told it the way I’m about to. For those of you who know me and my past, Peter of course, will not be enough to mask his true identity. And for those of you who consider it important, and if it isn’t already clear, I did ask if it was all right to write out what follows. I’m not completely sure why, but something resonated for me when I heard this story, and has since stayed in my thoughts.
           
Peter was in town a couple of weeks ago and called to see if I felt like meeting him for a movie. The timing was good for me, everything was fine at home, so I went. The movie, I knew, was just an excuse—something to delay going to a bar, and after the movie our shoes had barely connected with the sidewalk outside the theatre before he asked if there was some place in particular I wanted to go for a beer, his treat.
           
It’d been almost a year since I’d seen him. He is on the road much of the time—one of those jobs that isn’t sales exactly, but something like it—checking to see that merchandise is displayed correctly in various grocery outlets. It sounds like the kind of job you’re most likely to learn to accept if you’d previously had a much worse one.
           
We were on our second beer when I mentioned having recently bumped into this woman we both knew from the old days. I’ll call her “Carol.” Carol had worked on the floor in the same nightclub where Peter and I know each other from. He and I worked in the kitchen. It’s a long, tired tale, which I won’t go into, but we were there for years. Carol was from early on in the life of the place, and memorable for reasons that even now seem exploitative to include here. How shall I put it? She was a lousy server who made excellent tips nevertheless. When I saw her recently there was, at least superficially, little change. She was still very attractive, but there now seemed to be something apologetic in the way she spoke, as if she was sorry for something she couldn’t bring herself to describe. Our encounter lasted only a couple of minutes—it seemed strange our paths crossed at all and felt as if it was somehow not supposed to have happened. Neither of us brought up the past. We only spoke about what we are doing now. I was happy enough with that.
           
After I’d mentioned this, Peter said he’d recently seen “Yvette,” and this is where his story began, with his recollection of going to a country wedding along with her and two others from the club. I remember I was invited to this thing as well, but couldn’t go and no longer remember why. What follows aren’t his exact words or phrasing, but hopefully the gist and sense are more faithful. The principal players are “Peter”: a line cook; “Yvette”: a server; “Andie”: a bartender with a husky voice and ridiculously compelling eyes; and “Kate” an assistant manager.
 


“I had access to a car,” he began, “And first it was just going to be me and Yvette. We were kind of buddy-buddy back then. There was this sort of unrealized romantic potential between us, like both of us were waiting to see if the other was going to initiate something—like ‘I will if you will’ only without saying it. Nothing ever happened. I crashed at her place once when we were both really drunk. That’s all.
           
“Anyway, I had this little tent, and I don’t know if you remember, but the wedding was out in the country and it was supposed to be one of those things where you could crash there afterwards, after the reception and the dance and all that. You just had to bring a tent or whatever. So I had the tent and Yvette was going to bring a sleeping bag and we were going to do that. That was the plan.
           
“Then the word got out that I was driving and Andie the bartender—you remember her, the one with the eyes—she asked if I had any room in the car and could she hitch along with us and I said sure and told her we were camping and she said that sounded fine. I don’t remember how we left it, if she was going to bring a sleeping bag or a tent or what, but of course, there was plenty of latitude to imagine me in a two person tent, the three of us squashed in there.
           
“From there it veered into the far-fetched. You remember Kate? She worked in the office for a bit—a  floor manager. One of the millions that didn’t survive all that long. Just drifted through. Dark brown hair, sort of Spanish looking. Anyway, she heard I was driving and she asked if I had any room for her and I said sure, so that made four.
           
“You remember. I was never all that... Well, okay, I mean it wasn’t like I was Don Knotts in a car with three gorgeous women either. You know what I mean? Just something about me being the one driving those three to that wedding was kind of flattering in its own way. Flattering isn’t quite right, but you get the picture.
           
“We met Sunday morning at that greasy spoon just down the street from the club. You remember it? What was it called?”
           
“The Stem,” I said. “It’s not there any more.”
           
“Yeah. The Stem. We met there. Remember those funny washrooms, you had to go down in the basement? The low ceilings? It always smelled funny down there, like paint that wouldn’t dry, mixed with vintage hamster cage or something.”
           
“Not your usual combination.” I meant his way of describing it, but he didn’t seem to pick up on this.
           
“Yeah, for sure. So anyway, after we had a bite we hit the road. I don’t remember exactly how far out it was—kind of over in the direction of Guelph, I think. Out that way. I remember pulling into the drive of the place. A white, two-story thing, only it was brick so I don’t know where I’m getting all that white from. A big property, surrounded by fields. Along the north side was this wind-break, these big trees.  It felt pretty established. Looked-after.
           
“Already in the car there’d been this funny vibe. I’m not sure where it came from and I can’t even really describe it. Maybe it was the dynamic of the four of us, something that was happening between the others, or what. Anyway, there was already this feeling of us being a group of four people that didn’t really need to spend a whole lot of time together. I think there was already this confusion over how my little tent was going to accommodate everyone, as if maybe it’d just been a joke, the idea of us crashing there afterwards, and of course you know what that meant for me—if we weren’t all going to stay the night that meant I was going to have to drive back, and if I was going to have to drive back it meant I was going to have to stay sober. I don’t know if you know this about me, but if I know I’m going to be driving I don’t ever drink anything, which kind of takes all the fun out of being at a country wedding with an open bar where you thought you were going to be crashing in your tent not all that far from where you downed your last cocktail. It makes it a different thing altogether. I can’t remember whether Andie or Kate even brought anything with them but I don’t think they did.
           
“The wedding was pretty nice, I guess. I don’t remember all that much. Just a few snatches. It was that waitress, Bonita, and that bouncer, the really friendly one. What was his name? The big guy.” Here Peter paused to fish the name from the past. I was the one who got it.
           
“Griffen,” I said.
           
“Yeah. That’s it. How come you remember? You weren’t even there?”
           
“I saw him twice a week for about three years.”
           
“That’s right. Yeah. So, during the ceremony, I’m not sure which part, there was that guy that plays the violin—the famous one, used to play with a lot of different bands—he was there. He’d have played the wedding march, but I think he must have also played for quite a while before or maybe after. He was over near this fence, and on the other side of it was this field, and when he first started you could see there were these cows way out in the field behind him, then slowly, as he kept playing, the cows started wandering over so that by the time he finished playing they were all at the fence, listening.
           
“Afterwards, at the beginning of the reception, I don’t know, maybe I still thought we were staying, but whatever. It might have still been up in the air. Of course, whatever was going to happen, I was the only one that had to pay any attention to how much I drank. I might have had a beer. If I did it was probably still undecided whether we were staying. I wouldn’t have otherwise, but I can’t remember. All I know is that we ended up heading back to town when it was still light.
           
“I don’t remember a meal or speeches or any of that, but there was a hayride. One of the neighbours was a Mennonite and he had the horse and wagon. It went along one of the edges of the property, then went beside this forest for a while before turning back. It’s funny. I can picture being on the hayride still, and the house and the cows and the violin player, but almost nothing else. Except one thing—two things—they’ve stayed with me all these years.
           
“One was from when we were in the car—actually both are from the car—but the first might have been coming or going. Probably it was on the way there because I remember the mood being lighter. There must have been this kind of flirty thing happening between me and Yvette because Kate asked something like ‘Are you two going out?’ She might even have said ‘Are you two sleeping together?’  Same meaning, different level of brashness. And Yvette and I looked at each other, she was in the front with me, and we smiled and both said ‘No’ at the same time, but it was a funny moment, like the world outside acknowledging what we both seemed to wonder about.”
           
Peter was quiet for a minute after this. Took a sip of his beer then began again.
           
“It was funny running into her. She’s the thing now. Well, you know that as well as I do. Successful artist, blah blah blah. Of course, that was coming on for years. You could see it was happening. We watched it, didn’t we? I have kind of mixed feelings about it, like I’m resenting her success, when I shouldn’t. I mean, I shouldn’t resent her making it, should I? I should be happy for her. But I’m not. What is it that makes us feel like that, seeing others do so well for themselves?”
           
I couldn’t answer him on that since it isn’t something that I ever feel, but then maybe that’s because I don’t mind standing on the sidelines the way he apparently does. For there to be a show someone has to be in the audience. I don’t mind taking my seat.
           
So I said to him that maybe it was partly just the feeling of looking back, that once upon a time anything could have happened, there was the future ahead of us, and now that that future is known and the possibilities have narrowed to the one we currently seem to have fallen into, that maybe he wasn’t so much feeling bad about what she’d become as he was feeling bad about what he hadn’t.
           
He looked at me and smiled and said, “You asshole.”
           
“Just a thought,” I said. “I’m not really sure what I expected to be when I grew up, but I don’t think it was this.”
           
“The other thing I remember from that wedding was from when we were leaving. We were either in the car just pulling out, or we were heading for it. We were at the front of the house, and the front door opened and the groom came stumbling out. He was in tears—he was actually sobbing. And Kate, you could hear the judgement in her voice, she said, ‘Why is he crying?’ meaning, ‘How could a person cry on his own wedding day?’ At least that’s what it sounded like to me. And I said I knew. The words were out of my mouth before I had any idea what I actually meant. I thought I knew—I felt I knew—but all that came out of my mouth was, ‘He’s sad.’ I can hardly remember a time when I felt I’d said anything more lame. But oh well. That was that. We drove home. I’m sure it’s not what happened, but I have the idea nobody said a thing the whole drive back.”
           
No more was said about the wedding. We had another beer and I talked about being married and having kids and never having enough money, and afterwards I walked Peter to the hotel where he was staying. Outside the hotel doors I asked whether he’d mind if I wrote out his account of the wedding.  He was fine with it, he said, but to change the names. I then walked home on my own.
           
I’ve been thinking about it ever since—about “Griffen” coming down the front steps on his wedding day in tears. Although I didn’t see it myself I feel like I did. I can picture it, maybe just because I remember him. I can think of a hundred reasons why a person might cry on his own wedding day. A call from a relative that couldn’t be there and that hadn’t been spoken to for years. Fears of unworthiness. A father generously offering to make the down-payment on a first home. A mother saying the words, “But you’ll always be my little boy.” A card from an ex-lover wishing all the best. Coming to terms with the meaning of the words “Till death do us part.” But you see, he was such a big man, a bouncer, he’s meant to be tough when it’s called for. And while I have no trouble imagining someone with a tough exterior being gentle on the inside, I still have trouble with the range of subtleties involved that might bring such a big man to tears. I can imagine them, and I can imagine them being felt, but I can’t imagine him not holding them in. Maybe he thought he had. It’s endearing and embarrassing at the same time. And I don’t know why, but thinking of Peter, thinking of him being in that car and the unravelling of his unrealized fantasy of one man and three women, and seeing evidence of a marriage having arrived at tears while as yet barely begun, I can’t help thinking that when he said “He’s sad,” what Peter really meant was, “I’m sad"—not that “I’m sad” in any way answers the question asked, but rather, it seems to answer a deeply-felt one that never was, and maybe never has been.

Joe Davies

Joe Davies' short fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, eFiction India, The Dublin Review, Rampike, PRISM International, The Manchester Review, Queen's Quarterly, Verity La, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Levee, The New Quarterly, and several other magazines and journals. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario.