Oh, allow me to dwell for a time in that book's brittle pages. I recently found it jammed in a box here in Baguio, stuffed far down below, a reprinted small replica of my own self's treasured start. Of the story itself, I could recollect not a word, but that cover! Young Joe Hardy, brown brushcut clipped tight, bends down on one knee to stare with concern at the dark footprints beneath him on the airport hangar's dirt floor. Older sibling brave Frank, black-haired and akin to Beaver Cleaver's big brother good Wally, frowns with confusion, while a policeman kneels on one knee far off in the corner, a piece of stray driftwood clutched tight, this enigma's stray heart. In the doorway behind them, a radio tower off in the distance waves its red flag, while the rear of a plane behind Frank lets us know where we are. I could, and I have, stared at that cover for hours, for who says that one's greatest awe must be found only in sunsets, or a nipple's small suckle?
Suddenly coming in contact with the physical presence of books that I've read as a child always fires me straight back to my first years on earth. This one volume right here, Hardy Boys Number Nine, The Great Airport Mystery so poignant, smacks me head-on with a blunt psychic slap. I feel almost physically stung, as if I should rush to a mirror and search for red cheeks. I don't remember the first Oh Henry! I ate, nor the first Tab cola I slurped, but Hardy Boys Number Nine -- what a raw scab I still scratch! (If it was another book altogether that still makes me so hard from the thrill of one word kissing another, a sensual string of illicit language liasons -- so be it. A false romantic view of one's past is hardly a sin to be scorned.)
Like Joe Hardy, I too, have an older brother, and I'm quite sure that this book was his before mine, but after me, let me state: no else stroked its firm spine, unless they silently scrounged my own bookshelf while I slept late at night. Something about that cover. Perhaps it was the sight of the two brothers themselves, our own doppelgangers (I wished!), intent and determined to solve this odd crime, despite their young age; or the soft silver glow of that police officer's badge; or the strange looming sight of that immense plane in the background, the painted blue wing on its side outlined in red trim -- all, in some manner, mysteries I might unravel, if only given a chance.
We all invent our own memories. Sometimes we're not sure what was actual, or merely an old photo's transmission. Yet that rising, tickling sensation returns when I stare at this book; images, arising. Myself at age six, tracing its cover, scenting its pages. (If you do not instinctively smell the whole breadth of a book before flipping it open, I'm not truly sure you can understand my obsession; if you neglect such a sniff, in truth, I feel pity.)
And a hardcover! These books were designed for my own meagre age and poor reading ability, but its binding bespoke an adult's large world and obsessions. If I might read such a tome, could I step any closer to Carson, that late-night treat for grown-ups? Dare I enter these pages, and possibly discover those secrets that lay just beyond nine-thirty at night? Only hardbound books might offer a look at a life that was more than mere noisy cartoons, or connect-the-dot outlines of vague shapes in blue crayon.
Before the orgasm erupts with all its new frantic shivers, what's the closest cousin we have to such spasms within? Whatever life force it is, I'm sure that I nudged it awake upon cracking that cover and finding a page near the front listing more excitement to come: What Happened At Midnight, While The Clock Ticked, The Witchmaster's Key and The Sting Of The Scorpion. Holy smokes, what a find! Such a future to follow! Not to mention the charcoal-style drawings beside the title page's bold print, offering a hint of adventures immense and unlikely, but present, right here between this back cover and front stacked so solid and firm. All I need do was open up.
So, that was some kind of a start. I soon read Hardy Boys books with abandon, in a literal sense -- all of real life as I lived it soon became a quaint backdrop to tales of domestic excitement, tarted with danger. Each story concluded with a foreshadow and tease -- the name of the next book in the series, embedded within the current adventure's last page, a crafty publisher's trick, not that I cared. Another, another, another. Give me more, again, better. The desperate lover's sad plea.
How long did it last? A year, probably less. A short, intense affair, myself submerged in another's embrace. After I devoured all those Hardy Boys stories --ignoring Nancy Drew's similar series with a quiet resolve -- I felt a great guilt descend, and I relapsed back to my first love of comics, and stayed loyal to them, more or less, stoned and drunk with their undemanding old magic, for a good four or five years.
I betrayed this vow only the once, and my heart still hangs low, drooping. For it involved Nancy Drew, and her escapades were for girls, end of story, enough. Please don't give them as gifts, I silently pleaded to unsuspecting grandparents and friends. One afternoon yard sale at the end of Grade Three, I rummaged through paperback stacks on somebody's front lawn until I found a new find: a tattered TV-Movie tie-in, a late Seventies relic, both Hardy Boys and young Nancy Drew teaming up to fight crime, with eight pages of dumb heartthrob photos stuck square in the middle, glued to the spine. Should I allow Nancy Drew to enter my world? Was the potential reward enough of a lure? Tormented, I finally decided to give it a go. After all, the Hardy Boys were her friends. Perhaps she had more grit than I could know or suspect. Begrudingly, I decided to accept her role in this tale, but it felt forced and unwanted, a betrayal of self. My first glimpse of compromise.
This, on the same day as my school's annual spring Fun Fair, Pine Grove Public's hurrah, not the summer itself but that courtship's first dance. Wandering around the transformed parking lot, a makeshift carnival on tarmac. Blue cotton candy inhaled straight from tiny white sticks, each lick and quick chew staining my tongue shades of sky. (Why do we eat other foods, yet inhale cotton candy?) The spring afternoon fading quickly to dusk, me walking home under shy purple skies, my face painted clown-white, crimson lips as an add-on, and that Hardy Boys find clutched between sticky fingers, skeptical, but excited, too. In Nancy Drew's own brave decisions alongside Joe and Frank, I might discover I'd been wrong, and this was enticing, a thought adults might consider.
A 1993 reissue, this current edition of The Great Airport Mystery's copyright states. 1965, 1957, and 1930 are the other reprint years duly dated, an entire century's vast sprawl reduced to small type, the years themselves slinking backwards in reverse incremental incarnations. Were we to somehow enlarge that white space between those four bloodless dates, a magic glass magnifying, our old house might arise from those random blank gaps, 10 Bayshore Crescent returned, restored and in full.
The year, 1980 -- or '81, at the latest. An ordinary evening, distilled. The family room is downstairs, just below old-fashioned doors saloon-style in design. Next to the fireplace squats our black-and-white television, just turned on and still warming, its small silver dot growing wide and inclusive, the CFTO news jingle announcing the hour; my father sits leans back on the couch with the paper all spread, as his pipe smoke slowly slinks through the room's cosy charm; my brother beside him, holding his small plastic glass of ginger-ale mixed with grape, an evening's great treat after street hockey's demands; the warm scent of roast chicken slowly cooked in the oven drifts down from the kitchen above, as my mother hums softly to the radio's tune, puttering and putting our whole lives in their place. I wander in from the toyroom, restless and bored, the Silly Putty's soft squish in my palm my lame attempt at delight. On the corner of our small oak coffee table, a new hardcover book made for children sits near its edge, forgotten, almost falling. Intrigued, I move forward. From now, life approaches.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
COST OF LIVING (first part of a fiction)
After the war, the three of us left alive from our regiment decided to split the cost of living by renting an apartment together in downtown
I finally told them: Fuck it. Just give me the floor
Harsh cold and discomfort: my bedfellows of choice. I had spent a good many months sleeping on dirt and all of its natural cousins, and I had grown to enjoy, even require, hard rocks as my pillows. Could cracked kitchen tiles be any worse? Even the gouges those stones made on your neck and your ears offered their own form of love. The rain made you wet, the snow made you shiver, the sun’s rosemary heat burned you quite red, but those stones, at night, nicked you with edges that snapped you awake; compared to the weather, they at least served some sort of purpose. I couldn't find much else that did.
The pain from those nights spent scrunched up on granite didn’t even feel all that bad. Almost desirable, even. I grew to relish the sudden jolt out of dreams that shot me straight up out of my sleep and awake into the night. It reminded me that I hadn’t bought it just yet. I often thought of those stones’ sudden scratches with every shift of my neck as akin to own girl’s lengthy red nails back home in
Two years, off and on, of sleeping like this made white sheets and warm blankets an affront to my manhood. Give me a stray spot on the floor beside our small fridge, I told them. You pussies can have all the rest. They accused me of trying to play the tough guy. The war’s over, they said. You can relax now. At least take the couch. I told them to fuck off and let me sleep where I wanted. If 'playing the tough guy' was my one secret ploy, it wouldn't be enacted by arguing over who got the goddamn bed. The fridge’s dumb hum every night was bad enough; I didn’t need their daytime preaching in my ears, too.
For the first few weeks after returning to
One afternoon I woke up from a nap and saw Martin staring out of our tiny kitchen window, looking up at the snow that had steadily been falling since breakfast, a wide ruffled blanket extended like cotton. Giant, white flakes. We’d seen a lot of that stuff up in the moutains in Europe, and it had always reminded us of home. Now we were here and it didn't remind us of anything. It just was. Cold and wet and ugly.
I could tell by his gaze that his mind was already back there. He had a half-mournful, half-pitying face, but grotesque in its pose, exaggerated and false. I’d never seen anything like it. Almost as if he was imitating what somebody sad was supposed to look like. Something that looked so blatantly false must surely be real.
“Tell me this,” I said. I leaned up off the floor and swiped some solid sleep from my eyes. I was so hungry that it actually looked almost edible. Army food will do that to you. “Ain’t you the one who told me to get over it? You aren’t going to find anything out here that we left behind over there.”
He turned around and took a look at me head-on. I could see the one-quarter Metis in his face from that angle. Depended on the light, usually, but I spotted it this morning clear enough. A kind of natural cloak to his face that matched his black hair. I was going to make a crack about him scalping me, my usual jibe, but I shut my mouth before the words sneaked out. I sensed a shadow or two.
“I’m just looking at the snow, boss ,” he said. “Watching it fall.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” I said. Already thinking about how I could get the hell out of here for good and somehow make him feel better. I was too exhausted and indifferent to offer advice. “Looked like you were getting ready to jump out and start some other kind of life, depending on how the drop went. This is only four stories, you know. There's a chance you might actually live. You telling me you survived Hitler and Hirohito in order to break a leg on
That made him smile, but Martin’s smile had never done much for anybody, let alone himself. One of those half-hearted grins that made the other person wonder what lay underneath all that forced joviality. Anybody who forces a smile once too often can never truly look real ever again. Something else I picked up overseas.
UNIBROW II: CORRINE
-- Continued from 'Unibrow'. (Scroll down for the first installment.) A small-town 7-11 has been robbed, and an employee, Travis, was shot and killed. Employees are being questioned. Stories aren't jibing.)
Wait. Cameron said that? What a tool. Complete, Canadian Tire, power drill, tool. First of all, I wasn't the one that told him about Travis getting shot. I dont talk to Cameron if I can help it. Cameron, like, invents these conversations between us: "I was talking to Corrine, and she told me... Blah, blah, whatever. He thinks we have this, I don't know, bond. Our shifts usually don't even overlap all that much, maybe twice a month, but I know for a fact that he tells everybody at the store all the time that we were talking about whatever it is that pops into his whacked little brain. He just says shit.
Did Cameron tell you that we used to go out together? Or that we were even, like, friends? Jesus, what a knob. I've known him since, like, Grade Four, and I dare you to find one, single, person in the entire town that would tell you we went out for, like, as long as a day. An afternoon, even. We had some of the same classes together, sure. Chemistry, Math in Grade 11. Maybe Canadian Studies, I don't know. It's been awhile. He might have been there. I didn't, like, keep track of his presence. He wasn't on my radar, basically. I don't think he was ever on anybody's radar.
Wait. Who told you that? Kimberly? Oh my god. I know she was the one that told you that story. I know it was her. Not many people know it to begin with, so it has to be her. She hasn't liked me, since, I'm not even joking, Grade Three. I can't believe she told you. Like that little fact has anything to do with Travis, like, dying.
Well. I'm not going to lie to you now, because first of all, I don't lie. Like, to anyone. Let alone cops. Second of all, it doesn't mean anything, so whatever. You know already, obviously. I gave Cameron a handjob, like, three or four times, max, okay? Big. Effing. Deal. If he thinks that, like, constitutes a relationship, and if Kimberly does too, they, are, lunatics. I barely even remember it at all. Not because I'm, like, a slut, like I've had a hundred guys or anything, not because of that, but because, like, he's not the kind of guy you'd really want to remember. For a thing like that. Nothing special in that, like, genetic category. I think you get what I'm saying.
And it was, what, like seven years ago? We used to go watch the football team play. I think it was, when was it, fall of Grade Ten, maybe? I was supposed to be cheerleading, but I, like, twisted my ankle in practice, so I was out for a month. It still hurts when I stand on it for too long at the store. Anyway, I went to the games, just to see how all the other girls did on the sidelines. Cameron tried out for the team, and was cut, like, I'm not even kidding, the first hour. That's what he told me. So I ended up sitting beside him on the top of the bleachers a couple of times. I think he, like, manoeuvred himself beside me. We started talking and stuff, whatever. Like I said, I've known him since we were, like, nine. It's not like I could just ignore the dude. And it gets freaking cold in November, especially with the wind whipping all around the bleachers, and he wasn't as bad looking then as he is now, so, whatever. Stuff happens. It was all, like, discreet. I mean, hardly anybody ever came to our football games to begin with. I never saw any of you guys there. And it's not like we filmed it. And God, we were fifteen. And it's not like I even blew him, and if Kimberly says I did, she, is, mental, because that, never, happened. Probably in Cameron's dreams, it did. His dreams, my nightmares, right? Maybe in her dreams too, for all I know.
I only heard about it later, when I came in for my shift after the shooting. Vincent said that Cameron said that I was the one who told him that Travis was shot in the face. Yeah, in the unibrow. I totally didn't tell him that, because first of all, I didn't talk to Cameron at all after Travis was shot, not once, and second of all, Travis didn't even have a unibrow, so why would I, like, explain it that way? I guess Cameron is telling everybody that Travis looked like Bert from Sesame Street, which is ridiculous. I'm not saying Travis was getting ready to apply to be on The Bachelor or anything, but the dude did not have a megabrow on his forehead, and he was sure as hell better looking than Cameron himself.
Who, by the way, was constantly putting Travis down, telling him he was dumb and shit. He did the same thing to me whenever I saw him. I was reading one of the Twilight books at the till when he came in for his shift one night, maybe the third one in the series, I can't remember, and he was all, "ugh." I'm like, "fuck you Cameron!" I never see him reading anything. He just wanders around town with the stories he makes up in his head. That guy's still stuck in the past on the bleachers with me. That's his little fantasy, and he's making fun of me for actually reading a book?
Anyways, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Any of it. I just don't. You work with a guy for six, seven months, and he gets shot in the face, it just, I don't know, it makes you all sick inside. Then you add on top of that, the fact that people you've known for years are making stuff up about you, telling people you told them shit that you didn't, it just makes me even more, like, ugh. Bad enough we have to work in the same store where our co-worker, like, died.
And I don't see what any of this has to do with the fact that Travis is dead, and that the guy who did it is still out there bopping around. I don't know if you think some of us are bullshitting you, for whatever reason, but I told you already, I don't lie. Ask anyone. And if Kimberly was the one who told you I slept with Cameron, I will do more than bitch-slap her. I know you're the police, whoop-de-do, and I shouldn't be saying that, but I'm serious. She thinks that because I work in a convenience store, and because she went to college in Kingston, or wherever, she's, like, a better person than me? Please.
Oh, oh, oh, here's a tip: Why don't you haul her bony little ass back in here and ask her about Cameron again, alright? Ask her about what those two did in high school. All's I'm saying is, I'm not the only one who was good with her hands. Word gets around. Despite what she might think, I know stuff too.
Wait. Cameron said that? What a tool. Complete, Canadian Tire, power drill, tool. First of all, I wasn't the one that told him about Travis getting shot. I dont talk to Cameron if I can help it. Cameron, like, invents these conversations between us: "I was talking to Corrine, and she told me... Blah, blah, whatever. He thinks we have this, I don't know, bond. Our shifts usually don't even overlap all that much, maybe twice a month, but I know for a fact that he tells everybody at the store all the time that we were talking about whatever it is that pops into his whacked little brain. He just says shit.
Did Cameron tell you that we used to go out together? Or that we were even, like, friends? Jesus, what a knob. I've known him since, like, Grade Four, and I dare you to find one, single, person in the entire town that would tell you we went out for, like, as long as a day. An afternoon, even. We had some of the same classes together, sure. Chemistry, Math in Grade 11. Maybe Canadian Studies, I don't know. It's been awhile. He might have been there. I didn't, like, keep track of his presence. He wasn't on my radar, basically. I don't think he was ever on anybody's radar.
Wait. Who told you that? Kimberly? Oh my god. I know she was the one that told you that story. I know it was her. Not many people know it to begin with, so it has to be her. She hasn't liked me, since, I'm not even joking, Grade Three. I can't believe she told you. Like that little fact has anything to do with Travis, like, dying.
Well. I'm not going to lie to you now, because first of all, I don't lie. Like, to anyone. Let alone cops. Second of all, it doesn't mean anything, so whatever. You know already, obviously. I gave Cameron a handjob, like, three or four times, max, okay? Big. Effing. Deal. If he thinks that, like, constitutes a relationship, and if Kimberly does too, they, are, lunatics. I barely even remember it at all. Not because I'm, like, a slut, like I've had a hundred guys or anything, not because of that, but because, like, he's not the kind of guy you'd really want to remember. For a thing like that. Nothing special in that, like, genetic category. I think you get what I'm saying.
And it was, what, like seven years ago? We used to go watch the football team play. I think it was, when was it, fall of Grade Ten, maybe? I was supposed to be cheerleading, but I, like, twisted my ankle in practice, so I was out for a month. It still hurts when I stand on it for too long at the store. Anyway, I went to the games, just to see how all the other girls did on the sidelines. Cameron tried out for the team, and was cut, like, I'm not even kidding, the first hour. That's what he told me. So I ended up sitting beside him on the top of the bleachers a couple of times. I think he, like, manoeuvred himself beside me. We started talking and stuff, whatever. Like I said, I've known him since we were, like, nine. It's not like I could just ignore the dude. And it gets freaking cold in November, especially with the wind whipping all around the bleachers, and he wasn't as bad looking then as he is now, so, whatever. Stuff happens. It was all, like, discreet. I mean, hardly anybody ever came to our football games to begin with. I never saw any of you guys there. And it's not like we filmed it. And God, we were fifteen. And it's not like I even blew him, and if Kimberly says I did, she, is, mental, because that, never, happened. Probably in Cameron's dreams, it did. His dreams, my nightmares, right? Maybe in her dreams too, for all I know.
I only heard about it later, when I came in for my shift after the shooting. Vincent said that Cameron said that I was the one who told him that Travis was shot in the face. Yeah, in the unibrow. I totally didn't tell him that, because first of all, I didn't talk to Cameron at all after Travis was shot, not once, and second of all, Travis didn't even have a unibrow, so why would I, like, explain it that way? I guess Cameron is telling everybody that Travis looked like Bert from Sesame Street, which is ridiculous. I'm not saying Travis was getting ready to apply to be on The Bachelor or anything, but the dude did not have a megabrow on his forehead, and he was sure as hell better looking than Cameron himself.
Who, by the way, was constantly putting Travis down, telling him he was dumb and shit. He did the same thing to me whenever I saw him. I was reading one of the Twilight books at the till when he came in for his shift one night, maybe the third one in the series, I can't remember, and he was all, "ugh." I'm like, "fuck you Cameron!" I never see him reading anything. He just wanders around town with the stories he makes up in his head. That guy's still stuck in the past on the bleachers with me. That's his little fantasy, and he's making fun of me for actually reading a book?
Anyways, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Any of it. I just don't. You work with a guy for six, seven months, and he gets shot in the face, it just, I don't know, it makes you all sick inside. Then you add on top of that, the fact that people you've known for years are making stuff up about you, telling people you told them shit that you didn't, it just makes me even more, like, ugh. Bad enough we have to work in the same store where our co-worker, like, died.
And I don't see what any of this has to do with the fact that Travis is dead, and that the guy who did it is still out there bopping around. I don't know if you think some of us are bullshitting you, for whatever reason, but I told you already, I don't lie. Ask anyone. And if Kimberly was the one who told you I slept with Cameron, I will do more than bitch-slap her. I know you're the police, whoop-de-do, and I shouldn't be saying that, but I'm serious. She thinks that because I work in a convenience store, and because she went to college in Kingston, or wherever, she's, like, a better person than me? Please.
Oh, oh, oh, here's a tip: Why don't you haul her bony little ass back in here and ask her about Cameron again, alright? Ask her about what those two did in high school. All's I'm saying is, I'm not the only one who was good with her hands. Word gets around. Despite what she might think, I know stuff too.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
TIME CAPSULES (A small sort of memoir)
This all happened at a small cottage complex outside of the tiny town of Callender, Ontario, not far from North Bay. Our families vacationed together there for a few summers in a row while I was in my mid-teens, and, since we knew that we'd most likely be back once again only one year from then, us kids decided to stuff an empty glass jar full of knicknacks and notes, then bury it as far as we could underneath that small beach's soft sand. Relatively deep. Not so deep that we couldn't dig it up with our shovels and find it with ease.
It felt like an odd, safe adventure. I can't remember everything we put inside -- notes to ourselves, some chocolate and candy, a few pages of ads from the local newsweekly -- but I do vividly recall writing a short note on scrap paper, something about the young serial killer who, along with his wife, had recently haunted my hometown and destroyed many lives, while I studied for math tests and played house-league hockey. The whole sordid tragedy had seemed so unreal that by burying this news it might act as a talisman. Smother all that bad mojo, perhaps. Turn back time, even. Life had accelerated too much.
The next year we returned to the cottage, and somehow we managed to find the same spot where we'd buried our jar exactly twelve months before. I seem to recall a map of some kind that we'd kept for a year in a junk-drawer or used book. Perhaps we simply made a good guess, took a shot with our shovels and got ready to dig. It wasn't that big a beach. The point is, we found the treasure. Under an hour, it took us. After taking our turns, I can't remember which one of us finally struck with our spade that small, solid shape in the sand. Doesn't matter. We all laughed with a strange sort of joy, those carefree mad cackles that only adolescents can shout without any shame.
A whole year had passed in our lives. (Twelve months at age fourteen or fifteen is quite an ordeal.) A Canadian winter, endured. Two semesters of school, over and out. Hockey games and track meets. Novels read, essays written, trumpets blown, guitars plucked. Four whole seasons had passed over that Planters peanuts jar with our junk, stuck under the ground with no light to befriend. Dark. Quite cold, probably. I almost felt sorry for all of our stuff, stuck inside that small tomb. We'd all been through so much that year, and this jar had been jammed in a hole way down in the earth. At least we'd found it. Gave it a chance to bathe in some sun.
We took the jar inside to the kitchen, cleared off the main table, twisted off the tight top. We all felt like magicians, unveiling our new trick for the whole world to see. No fresh smell of peanuts emerged, just dry, airless must. No matter. All the same stuff as last year, those random trinkets of time, but now they seemed new, somehow reborn. So were we, briefly. Our selves from the past had given us a small gift. Tiny things we thought were important had now become valid once more. Completed some circle. It was a joyous ten, fifteen minutes.
One of our small gang from the cottage ended up dead, either that year or the next, or the one after that. Tony. Big, goofy, funny Tony. My friend's friend. Fell asleep at the wheel, bounced right into a tree. Coming back down the Boulevard late at night, on the way home from Casino Niagara. Him and his other buddy, gone. Both of them seventeen, eighteen? As we lived in two different towns a highway apart, I mostly knew Tony from the summers we'd all spent on that beach hanging out, but still. Beach volleyball bonds kids together, as do thick chocolate milkshakes served in big metal mixers served straight from the kitchen.
Another thing: There was a private house right next to the resort, with girls our own age who sometimes strolled over to our beachside campfire at night. (Were there two girls or three?) I remember one evening, when all of us guys stared straight up at their small, second-floor window, a tiny rectangle of light that lit up our darkness. Occasionally, one or two of those girls would slowly, casually, stroll in front of the window. Getting ready for bed, brushing their hair. Toying with us, or so we liked to think. I even exchanged letters with one of those girls, a shy, tiny blonde, for a few months after that summer and well into the fall. At some point, the letters ended. I'm not sure who stopped writing first.
We never buried another jar. A few years later, I went off to university. None of us have been back to that cottage since we all were seventeen. Tony died soon after that. My other friends from that time, almost my brothers, I've not seen much of in years. The occasional party, a wedding. Time does that. It buries us.
All of those moments: a malleable glass that forms my own mental time capsule. Us standing in sand, gazing up like young fools at that bedroom's soft glow. Us sitting on logs, roasting marshmallows, listening to Steve Miller on tape, the Space Cowboy's sweet voice. Looking into that fire. Talking about jackshit. Ribbing each other. Under a northern Ontario night, its stars bright, almost winking.
It felt like an odd, safe adventure. I can't remember everything we put inside -- notes to ourselves, some chocolate and candy, a few pages of ads from the local newsweekly -- but I do vividly recall writing a short note on scrap paper, something about the young serial killer who, along with his wife, had recently haunted my hometown and destroyed many lives, while I studied for math tests and played house-league hockey. The whole sordid tragedy had seemed so unreal that by burying this news it might act as a talisman. Smother all that bad mojo, perhaps. Turn back time, even. Life had accelerated too much.
The next year we returned to the cottage, and somehow we managed to find the same spot where we'd buried our jar exactly twelve months before. I seem to recall a map of some kind that we'd kept for a year in a junk-drawer or used book. Perhaps we simply made a good guess, took a shot with our shovels and got ready to dig. It wasn't that big a beach. The point is, we found the treasure. Under an hour, it took us. After taking our turns, I can't remember which one of us finally struck with our spade that small, solid shape in the sand. Doesn't matter. We all laughed with a strange sort of joy, those carefree mad cackles that only adolescents can shout without any shame.
A whole year had passed in our lives. (Twelve months at age fourteen or fifteen is quite an ordeal.) A Canadian winter, endured. Two semesters of school, over and out. Hockey games and track meets. Novels read, essays written, trumpets blown, guitars plucked. Four whole seasons had passed over that Planters peanuts jar with our junk, stuck under the ground with no light to befriend. Dark. Quite cold, probably. I almost felt sorry for all of our stuff, stuck inside that small tomb. We'd all been through so much that year, and this jar had been jammed in a hole way down in the earth. At least we'd found it. Gave it a chance to bathe in some sun.
We took the jar inside to the kitchen, cleared off the main table, twisted off the tight top. We all felt like magicians, unveiling our new trick for the whole world to see. No fresh smell of peanuts emerged, just dry, airless must. No matter. All the same stuff as last year, those random trinkets of time, but now they seemed new, somehow reborn. So were we, briefly. Our selves from the past had given us a small gift. Tiny things we thought were important had now become valid once more. Completed some circle. It was a joyous ten, fifteen minutes.
One of our small gang from the cottage ended up dead, either that year or the next, or the one after that. Tony. Big, goofy, funny Tony. My friend's friend. Fell asleep at the wheel, bounced right into a tree. Coming back down the Boulevard late at night, on the way home from Casino Niagara. Him and his other buddy, gone. Both of them seventeen, eighteen? As we lived in two different towns a highway apart, I mostly knew Tony from the summers we'd all spent on that beach hanging out, but still. Beach volleyball bonds kids together, as do thick chocolate milkshakes served in big metal mixers served straight from the kitchen.
Another thing: There was a private house right next to the resort, with girls our own age who sometimes strolled over to our beachside campfire at night. (Were there two girls or three?) I remember one evening, when all of us guys stared straight up at their small, second-floor window, a tiny rectangle of light that lit up our darkness. Occasionally, one or two of those girls would slowly, casually, stroll in front of the window. Getting ready for bed, brushing their hair. Toying with us, or so we liked to think. I even exchanged letters with one of those girls, a shy, tiny blonde, for a few months after that summer and well into the fall. At some point, the letters ended. I'm not sure who stopped writing first.
We never buried another jar. A few years later, I went off to university. None of us have been back to that cottage since we all were seventeen. Tony died soon after that. My other friends from that time, almost my brothers, I've not seen much of in years. The occasional party, a wedding. Time does that. It buries us.
All of those moments: a malleable glass that forms my own mental time capsule. Us standing in sand, gazing up like young fools at that bedroom's soft glow. Us sitting on logs, roasting marshmallows, listening to Steve Miller on tape, the Space Cowboy's sweet voice. Looking into that fire. Talking about jackshit. Ribbing each other. Under a northern Ontario night, its stars bright, almost winking.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
BABY, LEAVING
In my beginning, bewildered, I knew only softness and pain. My body lay still on a cushiony surface, surrounded by walls that had built me a fence. I was more than protected; I was trapped, and enjoyed my small prison, that tiny plush world. A bright rounded light shone straight down from a spot far above. Soothing and constant. Odd sounds on all sides intrigued and bewildered -- laughter and moans, small murmurs and sighs. Meanings beyond me. Clear comfort I had for most of time's tick, but distractions soon entered this closed sacred place. Shrieks -- my own, but containing within a force all too foreign. My throat shouted them out, yet their escape was short lived, for soon they returned, and I would wail once again. Despite this discomfort, a strange sort of ease often descended and rested, lingered and stayed. Were it not for a fierce, ragged flame that slowly ignited my insides with an uncommon fire, singeing my essence, I could have remained, over time, calm and content in that rectangular bubble.
For life was so novel! No language to curse out my confusion, or give praise to its virtues. Sensation itself -- all that I had to express simple needs. Tears, tangible: filling up all my vision, dribbling down my small cheeks, a regular spring, reliable. The roars from my mouth, the leaks out of my eyes, even the steady stream of hot shit exiting out of my anus, rancid but mine, were all solid proof I contained my own magic. I was nothing but tactile emissions; everything else, shades of shadows. A mystery with myself at its centre, the question mark's small, round dot.
When, inevitably, the light went away, the dark came back full. In that black for so long, I almost forgot light's true worth, its warmth and transparency, its unselfish bright wrap. Then it returned, garish but welcome. In each new burst of pure yellow -- grand faces that trembled. Soon, I supposed: someone other than me. Touching my skin and my hair. Stroking, but cautious. I felt their great fear, almost physically transferred. I was somehow limited. Separate. I began to sense that my own world must somehow soon grow to include those large forms looming so high and up there. Me. Them. Together. Life? If this was its truth, why this great hurt far inside, was it all just for me?
Next, often, pain. Quick and steady, slicing through insides. Agony intense, my cries gaining speed, gathering, soaring, achieving a strange manic pitch whose great height cancelled sound. These noises all merged with that round bulb in the sky that hung down from high up. After: nothing but silence. As sweet and as dense as the darkness it brought, this sound all but swallowed, the light sucked away, a full black embrace, lasting and firm.
For life was so novel! No language to curse out my confusion, or give praise to its virtues. Sensation itself -- all that I had to express simple needs. Tears, tangible: filling up all my vision, dribbling down my small cheeks, a regular spring, reliable. The roars from my mouth, the leaks out of my eyes, even the steady stream of hot shit exiting out of my anus, rancid but mine, were all solid proof I contained my own magic. I was nothing but tactile emissions; everything else, shades of shadows. A mystery with myself at its centre, the question mark's small, round dot.
When, inevitably, the light went away, the dark came back full. In that black for so long, I almost forgot light's true worth, its warmth and transparency, its unselfish bright wrap. Then it returned, garish but welcome. In each new burst of pure yellow -- grand faces that trembled. Soon, I supposed: someone other than me. Touching my skin and my hair. Stroking, but cautious. I felt their great fear, almost physically transferred. I was somehow limited. Separate. I began to sense that my own world must somehow soon grow to include those large forms looming so high and up there. Me. Them. Together. Life? If this was its truth, why this great hurt far inside, was it all just for me?
Next, often, pain. Quick and steady, slicing through insides. Agony intense, my cries gaining speed, gathering, soaring, achieving a strange manic pitch whose great height cancelled sound. These noises all merged with that round bulb in the sky that hung down from high up. After: nothing but silence. As sweet and as dense as the darkness it brought, this sound all but swallowed, the light sucked away, a full black embrace, lasting and firm.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
UNIBROW
Travis pissed him off, most likely. The guy came around the store about one, one-fifteen in the morning. Wednesday morning. I wasn’t working that shift. I didn’t even know Travis was working, actually. I don’t think he was supposed to. Somebody told me – I forget who, Corrine, probably – that Travis took over from Morgan, who usually worked the Wednesday night shift. Needed to look after his mom, I think. She was in one of her moods where she can’t stop crying. Starts cleaning out the fridge with Lysol from six o’clock to sunrise. I don’t know how Morgan puts up with it, but he does. Strokes her hair and everything. Talks softly. No wonder he ain’t got any kids, dealing with a mother like that twenty-four seven. I can’t say for a hundred percent certain it was Morgan’s shift, though. I don’t know everybody’s shift. I mean, shit, half the time I don’t show up for my own shift. Hard to keep time altogether in my head.
But somebody, I think it was Corrine, told me that the guy asked Travis where the potato chips were, and Travis told him they were in the second aisle, near the back, and the dude asked if that was the second aisle from, like, the right, or the second aisle from the left, depending on where you were standing, and Travis kind of rolled his eyes, just a little bit, but boom. The guy took out a gun and popped him. Cranked open the register, grabbed the cash, vamoosed right out of there. They ain’t caught him yet, but I’m pretty sure they will. Hope they will, anyway. I’m working tomorrow night. I don’t want the guy swinging back on some kind of a comeback tour.
You know, Travis had one of those, what do you call it. Where your eyebrow ain’t nothing but one big line? The unibrow, right. Guy shot him right in the centre of that unibrow. Everything scattered everywhere. Travis had that effect on people, pissing them off like that. All that sarcasm. I used to tell him, not everything’s a joke. Not everyone’s got the sense you got. Or the sense that you think you got. Cut people some slack sometimes, because you ain’t exactly, what’s his name, that black-hole dude in the wheelchair. Hawking, right. You ain’t exactly Hawking, I’d tell him. You work at a 7-11 like everybody else. A customer asks you a dumb question, just answer it. That’s all. Answer it. No need to eye roll.
Corrine, I think it was Corrine, told me that they were still finding little bits of brain, like, a week later, tiny gray chunks in between the cigarette packs above the counter. Travis never had much of a brain, but still. Can’t help but feel for the guy. Nobody wants to see that stuff right near the cash register.
Monday, January 24, 2011
THIS AFTERNOON, ALL TO HERSELF
A dozen children rushed back to the school when the bell rang its ring. A movable sea of dress shirts in white with their children inside, and blue skirts with red trim almost stroking the ground. Fluttering together, almost like birds in their flock. Slightly uphill they ascended, their school on a slope, rocky and jagged beneath their quick hover. The small gate shut. Clunk. One left behind, against the wall. This afternoon, all to herself. She stared quite intently at the ground, Supergirl using her laser-sharp aim. (How quiet the day is, when children depart!) She rushed forward, knelt down, sighed. Picked up her prize, quickly. Wrapped it around her fingers. Her own gem. A plain rubber band. Time to return. Only twenty seconds behind her schoolmates' smooth entry. Who could notice or care? She hiked the ten feet uphill to the door with a dance in her bounce.
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