The Other James Buchanan

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For thirty-eight years, all I knew about my daddy was his last name: Buchanan, same as mine, and that was all right with me until Mama died. The sta­tion gave me three days for bereave­ment, exactly how long it took me to find an enve­lope of uncashed cheques in a box of her odds and ends. That’s when I found out my daddy’s first name: James, same as mine.

The last cheque was from 1988, the year I grad­u­ated from The Comp, Lloydminster Comprehensive Secondary. The address was over on the Saskatchewan side of town, a street named Fall Creek that spelled farm country. 

I found him in the phone book and sipped whiskey until the end of Leno. I called him. He didn’t sound sur­prised when I told him Mama was dead. He agreed to meet me at Maggie’s at 7:00 the fol­low­ing evening for proper introductions. 

The restau­rant was only half-full when I stepped inside at a quar­ter to. I ordered a Blue and drank it before my watch said 6:59. The TV over the bar had scores from a Saskatoon sta­tion. The clock in the cor­ner of the screen read 8:01, Saskatchewan time. 

I asked the wait­ress if a man had been in here about an hour before, but of course I couldn’t describe him. A work­ing man, I thought. Or a busi­ness­man. A cow­boy hat, I was sure, though I couldn’t say why. Sweat ran down my back when she gave me a smile reserved for drunks, chil­dren and the insane, and she promised to ask around. A dif­fer­ent wait­ress brought me a beer, and I drank it all before 7:20, when my daddy walked in.

He was wind­burnt and lean, with lines around his mouth like knife cuts. His shirt was the clean­est pressed denim I’d ever seen and he apol­o­gized when he shook my hand.

“Hope you didn’t think I’d come on cen­tral time,” he said.

My laugh came out louder than I’d meant it to. “Wouldn’t that have been funny,” I said. 

“It sure would have,” he said, and we laughed again when the wait­ress came by and we found out my daddy and I drink the same beer.

It was no great thing, really, since every­body drinks either Blue or Canadian around Lloyd, but it felt like proof of some­thing. I looked at the mir­ror over the bar and saw a thinner-cheeked ver­sion of myself and for­got all about the eigh­teen slips of paper in an enve­lope in my pocket.

But then I drank a few more beers and asked him why she never took the money.

“Your mother, God bless her, always was a stub­born woman,” he said, and winked. 

I sipped my beer and just like that, I could tell we were in for a hard time.