SERIAL FICTION

Delroy and the Cheese — Part Eighteen

In which Mario explains his absence

This is the final chapter of a novella about life in a Canadian tree-planting camp. If you’re new, you may want to start at the beginning or go to the complete list of Delroy and the Cheese chapters.

Delroy still looked like Delroy in the suit and disco boots — only much taller and more gangly. The boots should have added only a couple of inches to his height but somehow he seemed at least a foot taller. He stood straighter than normal and walked with more purpose.

As we headed off toward Mario’s, I offered Andrea my arm. She accepted it and I suddenly understood why it pays to be gentlemanly. It is much more pleasant to have a beautiful woman holding onto your arm than for it just to be hanging there on its own. I like to think we made a fine-looking couple, me in my suit and her in her black sheath dress with the yellow polka-dots.

Susan looked over at Delroy to see if he would do the same, but he was oblivious. He just strutted along, humming and pulling his coat sleeves down over his wrists. Susan did a twirl as we walked and the blue dress she was wearing drifted out prettily.

When we got to the pizza place, Mario was sitting at one of the tables outside with a bottle of wine and some glasses in front of him. He was wearing a suit jacket and had a scarf wrapped around his neck. Maeve was next to him. She wore an oversized orange kaftan with a necklace made of bright blue stones the size of marbles.

“Damn! I should have got a scarf!” I whispered to Andrea. “Mario looks even cooler than we do!”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied. “Fashion is a journey, not a destination. Besides, you look fabulous.” She reached up and brushed a stray piece of poplar fluff off of my shoulder.

Mario waved at us.

“Ragazzi! Principessi!”

“Mario!” shrieked Susan. “Where have you been? We were desperate to show you our garden.”

She waved an arm at what we’d created across the street.

“Mi dispiace! I had to leave town on an errand. I am here now. You can show it to me now if you like.”

He stood and raised a hand toward Delroy. “But who is your friend with the fancy shoes?”

“This is Delroy,” said Susan.

Delroy held out his hand. Mario walked up to him, grabbed his face, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Piacere! The man of the hour! The reason we are all here!”

Delroy smiled awkwardly, unsure whether he should kiss Mario back. Mario let go of Delroy’s face, grabbed Delroy’s outstretched hand in both of his and shook it warmly.

“I hear you are a man who appreciates good cheese!”

Delroy shrunk back just a bit.

“Um. Hello,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Mario turned and offered his arm to Maeve. This made me feel cool because it was such a similar gesture as when I offered my arm to Andrea. Mario and me — peas in a pod.

We sauntered across the road. There was a young couple with a toddler looking at the garden. The toddler was slapping both her hands down on one of the bright orange tires, delighted with the noise it made.

Mario greeted them with a small bow. “Buena Sera!”

“Good evening,” said the woman. “This is lovely!” She pointed at the flowers spilling out of the tire. “Did you do this?”

“Not I,” said Mario. “It was these young people.”

“Well, I can’t thank you enough. It has really made a difference to the whole street.”

“We figured we might as well. We didn’t have anything else to do,” said Susan.

“Except look for cheese,” said Andrea.

“Cheese?” Asked the woman.

“Don’t ask,” said Andrea.

We walked slowly from one end of the block to the other — from one Inukshuk to the next. Personally, the Inukshuks impressed me more than the flowers. Dennis and his buddies had put some serious work into them. Some of the stones had taken four of them to wrestle into place.

We met a few more people along the way. Mario greeted them all. After a while, we went back to the pizza place.

Mario gestured at the table. “Sit! Sit!” he told us.

Andrea and I pulled a second table up to the first and we all sat down. Mario poured us each a glass of wine.

Delroy leaned over to Mario, a little embarrassed. “I feel I should explain about the cheese,” he said.

Mario nodded.

“The importance of the cheese wasn’t as something to eat. It wasn’t just a foodstuff. It was what it represented. It’s the context of the cheese that was the important thing — its juxtaposition with the world around us. Cheese on its own can be tasty. But it can also transport you.” He held his fingers in front of his nose as if holding a piece of cheese. “They say that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. The right cheese can be a miracle. It can carry memories of when you first ate it — where you were and what you were doing.”

“I agree completely!” said Mario. “And is this a memory you would like to carry with you?” He gestured at the sky and at the four of us. “It is a beautiful evening. We are sitting with beautiful people. We have beautiful wine.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket. “And we even have beautiful cheese.”

He pulled a small wheel of pecorino out of his pocket and placed it in front of Delroy. It was wrapped in wax paper with a picture of a green hillside dotted with some sheep. There was an official-looking seal holding the wax paper closed and all the writing was in Italian.

We all giggled at it. Susan let out a giant whoop and Andrea and I clapped our hands. Delroy sat up taller in his chair.

“This is beautiful,” he said. He reached out to touch it but stopped himself. “May I?” he asked Mario.

“Of course! Of course!”

Delroy carefully peeled off the seal and unwrapped the cheese. He bent forward and lay his head on the table to get a close look at it from the side. He closed his eyes and breathed in heavily. Then he leaned back and pulled a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket. He sliced off a sliver of cheese and held it in front of his nose. He sniffed it carefully and comprehensively, like a dog sniffing a lamppost before it decided whether to pee or not. It passed the sniff test. Delroy ate the sliver of cheese.

Mario beamed with pride. “I have a friend in Prince George who has a delicatessen — an Italian delicatessen. I drove down there and bought this pecorino from him.”

Susan leaped up and threw her arms around him. She kissed him on the top of the head. “You legend! So that’s where you were! I was worried you were dead! This is way better!”

“Mario! This is too much! It must have taken you all day just to drive there!” said Andrea. “We can’t accept this.”

Delroy looked a little uncertain and moved to give the cheese back to Mario who shook his head in refusal.

“It is good to do good things for people. It is good for the heart and good for the mind,” he said.

“Jesus! How long did it take you to get there?” I asked. I looked over at his ancient Alfa Romeo. It is more than 800km from Fort Nelson to Prince George. The car looked like it might have been able to manage about 80 of those without breaking down — assuming they were all downhill.

“One day there. One day back, but I had dinner with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. It wasn’t just about the cheese.”

“Well, you have to at least let us pay for the gas.”

Mario waved the suggestion away. “No, no, no. I told you. I went down to visit a friend. You owe me for the pecorino though. It was $4.99.”

“Sold!” I said. I dug a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and slapped it on the table.

Mario pocketed the money and poured some more wine.

Meanwhile, Delroy meticulously sliced small rectangular slices of pecorino and passed them around to each of us.

“I want you to really pay attention to this cheese,” he said. “I want all of us to remember this day. So study this cheese. Smell it. Feel it. Taste it carefully. You should nibble it rather than just down it in one bite, and you must compare each nibble to the one before it.”

I looked at my slice of cheese. It was light yellow in color, almost white. It reminded me of a ruler I had as a child except it was smaller and much softer and had a slight curl to it. It would have been rubbish to draw a straight line with. I held it up to my nose. It smelled faintly of the sea and of buttered pistachio ice cream.

Everyone else around the table was doing the same with their slices — carefully examining them, smelling them, and tasting them in tiny little bites.

Delroy cut off a slightly larger chunk of cheese and wrapped it in the yellow handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. He then carefully wrapped up the remaining cheese in the original wrapper and put the two pieces of cheese in separate pockets of his suit jacket.

Griff was a little drunk when we ran into him in the bar later that night. He couldn’t hide his relief that we’d managed to patch things up with Delroy.

“I’m so fucking glad I don’t have to fire you fuckers!” he said when Delroy showed him the cheese. He threw his arms around us and shouted at the bartender, “Two more pitchers! I need to buy these guys a beer!”

The bar was packed. It was probably about half tree planters from our crew and half locals. What with Mario’s wine and Griff’s pitchers of beer, Andrea, Susan, and I were soon brave enough to hit the dance floor. Susan pulled Delroy onto the floor a little afterward. We definitely stood out amongst the jeans and flannel shirts, but no one seemed to mind.

Back in camp, Delroy, with Morwenna’s blessing, hung the pecorino that was still in the original packaging above the lunch table. He felt that everyone could benefit from it.

“It’s a reminder that there are good things out there,” he told me. “A reminder that there is more to the world than just this camp.”

Personally, I was a little more cynical about it. Back when I was pretty much the only person to know about the cheese, the odds were against it being stolen. But steal it, I did. Now that it was hanging there in front of everyone at the lunch table I figured it wouldn’t be long before it ended up in someone’s sandwich.

Out on the block, Delroy kept the other piece of pecorino wrapped in the yellow hanky in his pocket. We planted together just like always. I jumped around and grabbed the creamy bits and Delroy kept our line even. The main difference was when we got back to camp in the evening. We tended to sit as a group of four at dinner now.

This is the end of the story of Delroy — at least for now. If you’ve missed any of the story you can find all the chapters in the post below.

If you enjoyed this piece and want to support my writing,

• 👏 Clap (up to 50x) to help this article be featured
• Check out the rest of my stuff
• 📭 Subscribe to get an email whenever I publish anything.
• Btw, the longer you spend reading an article on Medium, the more the algorithm thinks you like it, so when you find something good, savour the experience. Take your time. Highlight stuff. Leave a clever comment. Clap for it.

Doing any of the above will make me as happy as a toddler watching a unicorn juggle kittens. 🦄

Kathy K, haven’t seen you around in a while. Hope all is well. I just wanted to let you know I finally finished this.