FLYING COLOURS
by
19 authors including Rosalind Maki


NANCY BJORGO
DOROTHY COLBY COLLEEN DAVEY MARY FROST HAZEL FULFORD JOHN FUTHEY PARRY
HARNDEN MARIANNE JONES BILL MacDONALD JAKE MacDONALD JOAN MAITLAND
ROSALIND MAKI PATRICK McLEOD JOHN PRINGLE SHARON RANTALA JOAN SKELTON
TESSA SODERBERG KAREN KEELEY WIEBE CHARLES WILKINS "The work of these
writers is polished and assured, evidence that they are accomplished and
gifted. It is hoped that this anthology will draw attention to the
excellent writing being done in this part of Canada." Veronica Ross
Paragraph: The Canadian Fiction Review

FLYING COLOURS
NEW STORIES FROM
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO
edited by Rosalind Maki
Thunder Books
The Thunder Bay publishing cooperative
1994
The copyrights for all stories in this book are held by the individual authors.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title: Flying Colours: new stories from Northwestern Ontario
ISBN 0-9696339-1-2

Cover design and art: Holly Johns Page design: Kathy Lucky Published by
the Thunder Bay Publishing Cooperative. "A Slow Boat to China" by Nancy
Bjorgo appeared in Whiskey Jack 2, under the pen name D.H. Lee, as
"Don't Take a Teapot." "A Rose By Any Other Name" by John Futhey was
first published in Chatelaine. "Cluny Abbey" by Bill MacDonald first
appeared under different title in Confessions of a School Teacher &
Other Stories (Porphry Press). "Norris" by Jake MacDonald originally
appeared in Arts Manitoba, and The Bridge Out of Town (Oberon Press).
These four stories are reprinted by permission of the authors. Without
the generous financial backing of The Canada Council Explorations
Program for The Wolf's Eye, this book would not have been possible. This
book is distributed by: Singing Shield Productions, 104 Ray Blvd.,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. P7B 4C4 Phone 807-344-8355 All orders and
inquiries should be directed to Singing Shield Productions.

Contents
introduction RosalindMaki
THE WRONG NIGHT FOR BASEBALL BillMacDonald
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME JOHN Futhey
THURSDAY Joan Maitland
THE BORN O'DOWDS Mary frost
WISH PatrickMcLeod
STEP LIGHTLY Karen Keeley Wiebe
NORRIS JakeMacDonald
DOWN THE ESCAPE HATCH Nancy Bjorgo
LARRY FORTENSKY Dorothy Colby
IF WISHES WERE HORSES Marianne Jones
LIFE As WE KNOW IT Rosalind Maki
NEVER SAY NEVER Karen Keeley Wiebe
THE WhiTE BOAT John Pringle
THE AccIDENT Colleen Davey
TURN-TABLE Joan Skelton
DADDY's GIRL Dorothy Colby
MEMORY FRIEZE Parry Harnden
NETTY Sharon Rantala
BUTTERFLIEs Hazel FULFORD
JOURNEYING Tessa Soderberg
CLUNY ABBEY Bill MacDonald
THE GRAVEDIGGERS Charles Wilkins
Notes on the authors

INTRODUCTION
Rosalind Maki

     Too many years ago I was one of a small group of high school
students sitting around a long oak table in the Fort William
Collegiate library listening to "local writer" Sheila Burnford
speak about her novel, The Incredible Journey. She wore a grey suit
(or was it a Shetland sweater?) and plain shoes and she talked to
us about writing, about the novel itself, and the animals that
inspired it. What I carried away from that encounter   my first
brush with greatness   was confusion: On the one hand, there was
the book   thirty-eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller
list, and the object of endless exclamatory praise. It was "A
masterpiece!" "Captivating!" "A classic of its kind!"; "soon to be
a Walt Disney motion picture!" On the other hand, here was Mrs.
Burnford. Surely, she wasn't a writer, this brown-haired pleasant
middle-aged woman, wife of the man who had taken out my tonsils
when I was six. What had I expected? That a real writer would come
sailing into the FWCI library trailing New York sophistication like
cigarette smoke or perfume? Of course I did. Real writers came from
elsewhere.
     And real literature came from far away and long ago.

Over the past twenty-one months it has been my pleasure to get to
know many real writers, hard-working imaginative writers, from
Sioux Narrows, Atikokan, Kenora, Geraldton, Nipigon, Thunder Bay.
     In the course of selecting stories for this volume I read five
novels and more than two hundred short stories, and time and again
it was brought home to me that a sense of place   of street names,
towns, monuments, lakes, landforms, with all their evocations and
resonance   is at the heart of the writing of fiction.
     When a writer chooses a setting he commits his characters not
just to a point on the planet but to an attendant moral and social
code. Choose a setting and you choose a world rich with attitudes,
customs and colour. You also choose unexplored, sometimes darker,
aspects of that world.
     The reader experiences a tremor of recognition   perhaps joy,
perhaps trepidation   when he sees his own place names and
landscapes on the page. He enters the story as if from the inside,
with a fresh vision of himself and his surroundings. If the writer
has done his work, that vision will extend to a universal view of
human beings, of how they relate to one another and to their world.
     But it begins here   with the wit and observations and
narrative skills of writers such as Bill MacDonald, John Futhey,
Karen Wiebe, and Joan Maitland. With the District Courthouse in
Thunder Bay, the shores of Loon Lake, the forests of the Sibley
Peninsula.
     We have good reason to celebrate our writers. With flying
colours.

                            ---------

Obviously, a book such as this is not created single-handedly.
First there are the writers, nineteen of them. But many others play
a part. With this in mind, I would like to extend my sincere thanks
to the following people who have contributed mightily to the cause.
Much gratitude, for instance, goes to the staff of the Waverley
Library who maintained the front lines by fielding writers'
inquiries and marshalling the manuscripts as they came in.... and
especially to Karen Harrison, the chief librarian, who supported
our vision for the book and allowed us access to library
facilities. To Barb Koppenhaver whose untiring work has helped
bring the writing community to where it is today. We owe her a
great deal. To my daughter Jen for her quick and accurate
transcribing of manuscripts; to Nancy Bjorgo and Dorothy Colby for
their conscientious proofreading; to Mary Frost for her welcome
advice in the selection of the stories; to Fred Jones at CBQ for
his keen interest in the local literary community and his
enthusiastic promotion of both this book and The Wolf's Eye; to
Holly Johns who came on board at the eleventh hour and transformed
our verbal metaphor into an artful book cover; to Kathy Lucky for
her virtuoso performance on the desktop unit, and especially for
her good humour through the many arduous hours of production; as
always, to my husband Vern, for his continued support.
And finally to Charles Wilkins, for placing his confidence in me,
for his guidance, his editorial advice and assistance, his
insights, and for helping me maintain my perspective through the
many months of this book's creation. Without his talent and vision,
his commitment to area writers, Flying Colours and The Wolf's Eye
would not be.

Rosalind Maki
September, 1994

The Wrong Night for Baseball
Bill MacDonald

Sally said, "Why can't they just cut it out, for God's sake? Why can't
they go in there with a goddamned knife and cut it out, like your
appendix?"
"I don't know," I said. "There must be more..."
"Why can't they inject it with rat poison?"
"I have no idea."
"Or zap it with a laser?"
"Someday..."
"Someday? Someday?"

I've always loved sunsets from Aunt Edna's veranda. In autumn, when the
lake is dark and there are whitecaps, it's like an explosion in a
paint factory. In winter, when the beach is snow-covered and fog
blurs the horizon, it's more like the end of the world. My earliest
memories are of watching sunsets with Aunt Edna. We used to sit at
the dinner table, long after everyone else had left, and very
softly she would sing: "Now the day is over, night is drawing
nigh..."

Sally and I first met at Silver Islet, when we were both six. I was
convalescing from an eye operation, and had a patch over my left
eye. My mother said I looked like a pirate. My father said I looked
like a beggar. Deprived of stereopsis, I went around bumping into
things and falling down. I also had an ear infection, and felt
generally miserable.
Then one day the precocious, sunburnt girl from down the beach came
knocking, sent by her aunt to cheer me up. I said I couldn't come
out and play because I was sick.
"You don't look sick," she said. "You look like a gangster."
So we dug holes in the sand, and sailed toy boats, and threw bread
to the sea gulls. We exchanged theories on how the world worked,
and why parents got divorced.
"What's under your eyepatch?"
"Would you like to see?"
"Yes."

When we met again, five years later, I saw her with both eyes and
discovered a different person. We updated our views on how the
world worked and why parents got divorced, but we didn't dig holes
in the sand or play with toy boats. We took long walks on the
beach, and talked from morning till night, and one day, for no
apparent reason, we kissed and held hands.
"I think we should get engaged."
"Engaged?"
"We'd keep it secret. No one would know. You'd have to write me
letters all winter, and wear this ring."
But the ring didn't fit, and neither of us liked writing letters.

Two summers later, we discovered the ruins of an old logging camp. We
stumbled on it one hot August afternoon, when we'd wandered further
than we should have, picking blueberries. We pretended it was an
abandoned castle, with a moat, a dungeon, a drawbridge. Though the
buildings were collapsed and rotten, we closed our noses to their
stench, our eyes to their ugliness. There were wild flowers in
profusion, and snakes sunning themselves. We called it our trysting
place, and from that came "Tristern Abbey."
Then one day Aunt Edna laid down the law.
"You can't disappear for hours on end and not have people wonder
what you're doing. Sally's parents may not care..."
"Sally's parents are divorced."
"Everyone on the beach is talking."
"We're engaged."
"Don't be ridiculous. You're not engaged!"

So for a while, we cooled it.
We made friends with Carlotta, who fluttered her lashes when she
spoke and showed you the whites of her eyes. Her swarthy cousin
Luigi was visiting from Italy. Carlotta's father had emigrated and
become successful enough to own a cottage on Pebbly Beach. Luigi's
father had not. Carlotta's father was president of the Silver Islet
Campers' Association. Luigi's father was a bricklayer in Cremona.
And so Luigi was anxious to learn. I feared Sally might become his
tutor, but needn't have worried: it was Carlotta who gave him
lessons, down in her father's boathouse.
"I guess it's all right."
"He's her cousin, for God's sake!"
"Yes, I know."
"It's not fair. If Tristern Abbey is off limits to us..."
Then, quite suddenly, Luigi was sent back to Cremona. Carlotta
contemplated entering a nunnery, but I don't think she ever did.
The last time I saw her, she was still fluttering her lashes.

Not surprisingly, Sally and I honeymooned at Aunt Edna's house.
It was in the fall, after everyone had left, and we had the beach
to ourselves. The changing leaves were beautiful. The north wind
blew, and there were often whitecaps on the lake. We wore sweaters
and slept under wool blankets. It rained every second day but we
didn't care. We gathered driftwood and burned it in the fireplace,
and went for long walks. Every evening, we sat and watched the
sunset over Pie Island. We played cards by lamplight, and read
Shakespeare's sonnets aloud, without understanding them. We made
fudge and picked highbush cranberries, but try as we might, we
couldn't relocate Tristern Abbey.
When it was over, Sally said she'd never been happier.
"If I drop dead tomorrow, I'll have no regrets."
"None?"
"None."

Half a lifetime later, driving home from Crystal City, where we'd gone
for a second opinion, we stopped at Mount Josephine to watch the
sunrise. We sat there holding hands, listening to The Mamas and the
Papas on the radio. And when the sun came bursting over the horizon
like a cannon ball, Sally said, "Do you remember Tristern Abbey?
And Carlotta? And the holes we dug in the sand? Do you remember the
sunsets?"
"Yes, and the beach in the moonlight, and lamps in the windows..."
"The last ducks of the season..."
"Starry nights..."
"Cool mornings..."
"Do you believe in heaven?"
"I'm beginning to, more and more."
"As a place, or a state of mind?"
"As the final, fuzzy stage of life, like looking through smoked
glass."
"Why can't they just go in there and cut the damned thing out and
be done with it?"
"Beats me."

During chemotherapy at the Crystal City Clinic, we met old Mr.
Archbold, who was in his seventies. He was also on renal dialysis.
Without a hair on his head, he warned us about nausea and baldness.
"Ain't so bad," he said. "At least you don't have to eat porridge
in the morning or comb your hair."
His little grandson Gabe used to come and sit with him, and pretend
his cane was a shotgun. Gabe had the shortest crew cut I'd ever
seen, about a millimetre in length. He said he liked it that way.
He said it had been his idea.
As ill as he was, Mr. Archbold ranted and raved about the
feminization of America. The demasculation he called it. "One of
these days," he predicted, "when the heathen horde arrives and our
able-bodied men are all sitting around making daisy chains, the
women will find themselves flat on their backs, looking up at the
sky, wondering who the hell is supposed to be defending them."
He also bemoaned the fact that today's world was a young person's
world. Until the day they brought in a bald-headed girl of twenty-
two, with dark circles under her eyes and translucent skin, and
then he changed his tune.

Sally and I perused old photograph albums, but they caused us more
pain than pleasure. We sat for hours, looking out the clinic window
at squirrels in the garden. We watched leaves turn yellow, saw snow
blanket the hawthorns. We talked of trips we'd taken, and regretted
not having married sooner. She remembered an old varnished punt we
used to go fishing in, but I didn't.
"Tell me truthfully, did we miss anything?"
"Not a thing."
"Did we do it all?"
"We did it all."
"Did we see enough, talk enough?"
"And then some."
"Travel enough, sing enough?"
"The only regret I have is not having drunk enough."
"Till death do us part. We got that much right."
"Could we have done things differently?"
"We played the cards the way they were dealt."
"And the view here is nice   the gardens, the trees..."
"The birds, the park..."
"The owls, the fireflies."

The Abrahamsons were saying good-bye too. They were Episcopalians.
Sally said Mr. Abrahamson reminded her of President Kennedy. At
dusk they sat side by side, looking out the window. They seldom
spoke, and never cried. Sally and I did enough crying for all four
of us. Hearing us, the Abrahamsons would cast sympathetic glances
in our direction, not realizing we were crying for them as much as
for ourselves.
One evening, Mrs. Abrahamson said to her husband, "It's getting
dark early these days. Darkness is falling earlier and earlier. It
saddens me to think we might be seeing each other for the last
time. That tomorrow, or the next day, we might not see each other.
Do you remember the time we went to a baseball game on the wrong
night, and there was no one else in the stands? We had the whole
place..."
"We sure as hell did," said Mr. Abrahamson.
"That's how I feel tonight," said Mrs. Abrahamson. "Like I'm at a
baseball game in an empty stadium."
"You people," said Mr. Abrahamson, "do you feel like you're at a
baseball game in an empty stadium?"
"No," said Sally, fighting tears. "I'm at Mount Josephine waiting
for the sunrise."
"Good for you," said Mr. Abrahamson.
"I'm at my Aunt Edna's house on Pebbly Beach," I said, "watching
the sunset over Pie Island."
"Good for you," said Mr. Abrahamson.
"But there was no one there," said Mrs. Abrahamson. "It was the
wrong night. The lights weren't even on."
We sat in the gloaming with the window open, listening to the
splash of fountains, watching nighthawks do aerobatics among the
hedgerows.

On our last night together, at the Crystal City Clinic, Sally said she
could hear bats squeaking in the oleanders. The breeze coming in
the open window was spiced with the fragrance of dead leaves,
redolent of Tristern Abbey.
"The way I look at it," whispered Mrs. Abrahamson who, like Mrs.
Archbold, had been widowed that morning, "he'll be joining some
very distinguished company. Did I ever tell you about the time my
husband and I went to a ball game on the wrong night?"
Down a corridor, someone with Aunt Edna's voice was singing. A
sunburnt, freckle-faced girl stood in the doorway, framed against
a stormy sky, patiently waiting. Further away, Mr. Archbold was
brandishing his cane and extolling the virtues of malt whiskey.
I heard children laughing, felt a warm west wind.
"Good for you," said Mr. Abrahamson, beckoning. "Good for you.
You've stopped crying. Sooner or later, everyone stops crying."

A Rose By Any Other Name
John Futhey

Mrs. Murnan had danced a lot when she was young and uncrippled, danced
alone mostly, while her husband was out on the road   the rail
road, Mrs. Murnan emphasized now, for people often thought he had
been a travelling salesman. The dancing began as a way of filling
out those lonely hours and quelling cold of the dark northern
winters; she would play record after record and dance in the living
room before the mirror, not just keeping time, but translating by
body and feet. She had been to university and was sure her dancing
was what Pope had meant when he wrote:
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
There was no music that she really disliked, but her special
favourite then, as it was still now, though she no longer moved her
body very much to its rhythms, was an album of W.C. Handy playing
the blues. It had a powder blue cover with a dark blue spine   Mrs.
Murnan felt the colours the true expression of the album's powers
  and its title was branded black and gold on its front. At one
time, before she had come to know their very strong attraction, she
would have said that one blues song was like another, especially
when it was so easy to see the similarity of theme and the
recurring structural pattern. But it was not long before she found
herself humming even before the record began the right tune for
that record, or at least knowing by the introduction what was to
follow. And then she came to know even as she put the records on
the spindle, eyes deliberately closed or averted, what particular
pleasure was to be hers. The John Henry Blues, for an easy
instance, was badly cracked, and she handled it very carefully. But
she did not stop playing it, for it soon became a wonderful ritual
that the whole album must be played, in a certain order, beginning
with "John Henry," moving to "St.Louis Blues," then to "Careless
Love" and finally to the summit   Lena Horne singing "Beale Street
Blues." She had named her daughter Beale for that record and that
street, after her husband had died in the crushed cab of a huge
locomotive in a Northern Ontario swamp where no birds sang.
That had been years ago. She had never told her daughter the
genesis of her name, though the daughter might have guessed, had
she been a guesser instead of a judge. But she had never evinced
the slightest interest in her name, and Mrs. Murnan used to quote
to herself, When I said autumn, autumn broke, and kept the
information to herself. Her daughter would likely say, should she
be told, "Ugh, icky pooh"   her favourite expression: she thought
it a positively killing remark to make to her Grade 4 students when
some peccadillo had been committed.
Now in Toronto, fourteen flights up in an apartment building, quite
crippled with arthritis, Mrs. Murnan still loved that record, still
played it   too frequently for Beale's liking, whose mind was on
her night course in adolescent psychology. To that record Mrs.
Murnan had given herself and been abundantly blessed. She played
the ancient circles, nearly grooveless; and she sang "Beale Street
Blues"; she worked over the words and phrases, arching them with
flagrance, flaring the nostrils and snarling the lip, nuzzling the
vowels, in the Lena Horne manner: And see Beale Street first. She
had, of course, never seen it, but she knew very well what it was
like; she could see and hear the blind man on the corner singin'
"Beale Street Blues." She understood completely that Beale Street
was far better than Broadway lights, old Market Street, the Strand,
or the Prado. God, it was better than Yonge Street, too, she
thought, looking down at the dead thing stretching away at her
feet, though it was clearly a street that suited Beale.
Very early Mrs. Murnan had known that Beale's name was unsuitable.
She knew now that it was utterly wrong, as she watched Huncamunca
(her private sobriquet for her daughter) iron her black choir gown,
which she wore to sing her uncompromising alto with several wan but
ferret-eyed ladies whose hair seemed to have been folded and then
ironed, in Grace Church choir; or as she watched her get out her
bowling oxfords and ball to go to the local YMCA and strike down
pins. "What has she to do with Beale Street or Beale Street with
her?" she asked.
And Beale watched the arthritis advance on her mother's body and
thought how well the punishment was attuned to the crime. Like the
grasshopper, she had danced away her life. Now the inevitable
winter would descend and not be kind.
The apartment had one advantage: it was small and easy to get
around in. The smallness was also, of course, its disadvantage, as
there was no escape from one another when Beale came home from
school, sat down to the supper her mother had prepared, and went
immediately afterward to her text. One night a week she went out to
her course at the university, but on the others, contention, strife
and envying were everywhere, Mrs. Murnan said frequently to
herself. She who loved poetry, and dancing, and the Prayer Book,
and the energy of the King James Bible, was a great trial to Beale,
for the girl had no regard for any of them. (At church, Beale
declared, they used The American Standard so that everyone could
understand God's teachings.)
One of the special pressure points of their fractious relationship
was the window. Cracked open just enough, Mrs. Murnan had learned
with practice, it would give a special keening sound to the wind.
Open too much, there would just be wind. But work it right, and the
sound was splendid   full of loneliness and wildness, a wailing
like the blues, and a delicious contrast to the unearthly coziness
of the apartment.
Beale hated it, and would often give the window an equally fine
touch in the other direction, and snap the life cord of the sound.
It pleased her immensely to be able to do so. To the mother it was
a transparent action, that intentional touch. She wondered how good
a teacher she could be if she thought anything that obvious could
fool anyone. "The children must put a lot over on her," she thought
  and the thought pleased her. She would then herself go to pull
the drapes and give her own nudge, allowing the wind to call in
again. To Beale it was like the throbbing of a tooth (had she ever
allowed a tooth to throb); but the sound bleared the bright lights
of the street and turned the civilized sky into a green-streaked
wild balefulness that was both painful and pleasing for Mrs.
Murnan.
Often in her wheelchair but not confined to it, Mrs. Murnan would
wheel freely about the apartment on the night when Beale was at
class or Saturday afternoon when she bowled, or Sunday morning when
she rehearsed and sang. She had an ironic attitude to her illness
which was a great strength. In private her wheelchair was
Jehu. She liked to think of the heathens that so furiously raged,
especially as Handel's music expressed that rage, and she imagined
that rage as something like her own   inward and furiously
powerful, but powerfully restrained. She was not at all sure that
was right, but she liked her interpretation.
Beale, of course, would have the traditional distaste of the
heathen, and agree with the obvious distaste of the psalmist. But
"Fret not thyself because of the ungodly" countered Mrs. Murnan,
emphasizing "thyself." She smiled and comforted herself with the
refreshment a richly quotable line would give through her pain. The
fretting garment was clearly visible to her. She knew that the
stronger Beale appeared to be, no doubt the more fretted she must
become, the more peevish and perverse. Mrs. Murnan had always
believed that obeying a line like that as far as one could oneself
made it very likely that the ungodly would receive a double portion
of the fretting avoided by those who stayed calm and untroubled.
Beale regarded herself as a born teacher. "Non fit" she used to
say, never being able to remember "nascitur," and she would expose
her ill-fitting false teeth that looked as though they had been
purchased in a joke shop, the kind in which the pink gums appear to
be oozing out between the teeth and down over the tops, and her
special grace, she would say, was her knowledge of human
psychology. All her fellow teachers said she was so good at knowing
why a child said or did such a thing or other, and how smart she
was to figure out what her response to the situation ought to be.
Her belief was that the decision, to be effective, must be
immediate, and so she always acted decisively. She loved to assign
causes and prognosticate effects and was fond of saying that it was
all common sense, that no matter what seemed new in her ability,
everyone could really be as good at it as she was.
She had enrolled in the university course eager to show how wise
she was in the ways of understanding motive and hence character,
but soon sensed that the others regarded her as something of a
joke. They were all younger than she, and jealous of her experience
  that she assigned as the cause. Still, it was disconcerting to
see them yawn when she began, "Now in my experience as a teacher
and general viewer of human nature..." Sometimes they smirked, and
once she even caught the professor rubbing his chin as if it were
itchy   a trick she knew of old to hide the incipient laugh. Nor
did she like the idea that some sexual cause had to be the root of
every problem, and she supposed she was thought by them to be
something of a smart aleck when she refused to speak of phallic
compensation. Still one had to fight against those specious
interpretations, she told herself. "I believe in plain badness,"
she would say, "and experience proves it when you think of a poem
like 'The Spider And The Fly.'"
Her mother thought all of it too grotesque. And while Beale puzzled
over chapters and lists of questions, and examples about Johnny B.
and Mary S., Mrs. Murnan played at Jehu, scraping her chariot wheel
along the radiator, flushing the toilet and leaving it to run, or
letting in the wind from where it waited outside. Beale of course
had little patience with these tricks and very shortly would ask
whether her mother was tired. If Mrs. Murnan said "yes," she was
trundled to bed; if she said "no," she was trundled to bed, in case
she might find herself tired the next day. In any case, Mrs. Murnan
did not begin her harassing until she was ready to be sent to bed,
and having interrupted Beale's absurd speculations, she was glad to
go.
When Mrs. Murnam read that Lena Horne would be in town to tape a
talk show before a live audience, she was determined to go. It
would be her last chance, no doubt, given the nature of her
disease, and so she made arrangements with a neighbour to take her
down and to pick her up again after the show. Beale thought it
foolish but was glad of an evening alone to get her work prepared
for the next evening's class. She watched her mother dress
carefully and a little outrageously, thought Beale, for a cripple,
and then watched her leave, full of a sultry energy, to see and
hear Lena Horne, who probably had no idea of the stresses of choir
work. Mrs. Murnan was certain Lena would sing. She hoped it
wouldn't be "Stormy Weather," which she had never really admired,
and she desired but did not really expect her sweet favourite. Lena
had done a lot since that recording.

At her university course the next evening, there were more smirks than
ever when Beale appeared; bolder, nastier smirks. She thought of
what she would do if they were her students. She even felt her
skirt, thinking that some child at school might have pinned a sign
like "Kick me" on the hem. The touch also made sure that her slip
was not showing. During the course, the grinning grew; there was an
obvious air of expectation, and when something came up about public
confession and Beale gave a long talk on the fact that she always
thought it best for the child to be forced to confess publicly, it
was certainly her practice to demand it when the child was found
out, the class dissolved in mirth.
The tide washed over her and she glared. The professor nodded and
smiled, noting that he always liked to see that a belief was held
by the whole family, that it was good to see mother and daughter
agreeing on such an important issue. "And do you like Lena Horne as
much as your mother does?" It was obvious to the class that Beale
had not been at the show. Several in the class, including the
professor, had been. The corona of malice expanded, intensified to
a terrible brightness as Beale began to hear what had occurred the
evening before. Her mother had been invited up to the stage, her
ticket number selected from a drum, and she had talked warmly and
knowledgeably to Lena about the blues. Finally, they had sung
"Beale Street Blues" together, and after that, in a burst of
camaraderie, she had told Lena about her daughter's name and how
inappropriate it was.
"What would you call her if you were to name her now?" Lena had
asked. And the terrible reply had come: "Huncamunca." She had gone
on to describe the foolish creature in Fielding's play and had the
audience rolling in the aisles when she quoted "O Huncamunca,
Huncamunca O."
"Of course," she had added, "Beale's nose isn't as red as the real
Huncamunca's. Beale doesn't drink. She once read that there were
ten steps to a drunkard's life, beginning with the one when the
first drink was taken, and ending with the relatives leaving the
cemetery. So she wouldn't take the first one, and therefore she
isn't as funny as Huncamunca." Lena had commiserated with her, and
the audience had given a large round of applause.
Beale was shocked and humiliated. But she knew how to deal with
such problems, and her first thought was of the punishment that
must follow such an offence, in order to nip such boldness in the
bud. She knew the justice required before she left the university.
She came solemnly and sternly into the apartment, as she would into
the classroom when a grievous crime had been committed. She
confronted her mother, knowing by her face that she could not deny
the crime, and having said the requisite, "How dare you!" she
added: "Since you have done something icky pooh, you must be
punished. Say good-bye to this record album." And taking out the
records one by one, she placed each in turn on the floor, and
jumped with funny, jerky jumps up and down on them   like
Rumpelstiltskin, thought Mrs. Murnan, when the queen guessed his
name. At first she had meant to say she was sorry, for she had
known as soon as she left the studio the night before, that she had
gone too far   triumphant, but too far. But now as she saw the
primly set lips, the glowing gums, the nasty jarring jumps, the
obscene shoes smashing her favourite names and places, she raged
furiously, but she remarked only, "Beale, with your grace you
should dance to the Salvation Army Band; better still, you should
patent your dance as the Huncamunca."
"Go to bed," said Beale, "you are tired and you have been bad."
Mrs. Murnan wheeled sharply through the broken records, her tears
blurring the colours of the centres, with the titles and names she
knew so well, down the hall, and into her room, where having caught
her breath, the indignity growing on her, the intolerableness of
the punishment inflaming her, she moved quietly and painfully out
of her chair, and quietly but determinedly to Beale's room. There,
without hesitation, she took the bowling ball, heavy as it was,
wrapped it in Beale's black choir gown, and moved back to the hall.
Beale was bent over the broken records, fragmenting those pieces
still too large, ravaging the albums' emblazoned lettering, when
she sensed, too late, power behind her. She caught just a glimpse
of blackness descending before she was knocked heavily and
permanently to the floor amongst her chaos. Mrs. Murnan looked
quizzically for a moment, then went back to Beale's room and
returned with the bowling shoes. They were not easy to get on
Beale, who was lying prone, but she managed at last. She decided it
was unnecessary to tie the laces. Then Mrs. Murnan sat down in the
quiet, bright room with the thin wail of the wind that checked and
calmed the brassy sky, and rested.
She was on Beale Street, and the night was full of flame and scent,
dusky people in prints, shadows passing open lighted doorways.
Beale was there, dressed in bowling shoes and gartered nylons,
looking cross and reading a book. Her face was Lena Horne's and
those big bright teeth (how they had flashed at her through the
years and last night!) had replaced the dead pink ones. Mrs. Murnan
wanted to ask her to sing, but although the task of speaking the
words took a lot of strength, it seemed they had not been heard.
The mouth was slackly open, full of gums; the eyes looked
surprised. I should have called her Pandora, she thought. She knew
that might have been a better choice, but she couldn't say why. At
the moment it did not seem to matter. The blind man was singing on
the corner, no sergeant appeared on the horizon. The business never
ceases 'til somebody gets killed, Mrs. Murnan sang as she began to
dance the line, slowly moving in a circle, through the bright room,
round and round the silent wreckage in the centre.

THURSDAY
Joan Maitland

Mary stood in the sunlight at the narrow window, watching the firemen
below play volleyball on the paved side yard. The young redhead was
sitting on the sideline, petting the stray dog who had shown up a
few weeks ago. He reached into a blue box and gave the dog a
biscuit.
I'll bet none of them know dog biscuits used to come in cloth
sacks, she thought, and suddenly recalled William waving aloft the
long underwear with the red Spratt's dog biscuit patch on the seat.
He had shouted, "The trouble with you, woman, is you're crazy!"
He was gone a few weeks later, just dropped dead in front of the
courthouse. She had not cried at the funeral, or after   not until,
sorting through his clothes, she came across the underwear with the
dog biscuit patch.
She had not loved William, and he had not loved her, but this had
not prevented them having seven children. So her life had been
full. She cared for the children, ordered groceries over the phone,
cooked, stoked the fire in winter, and once a week polished all the
shoes.
William went to work and provided finances to run the house. He
made good money and gave her a generous household allowance,
enabling her to have a cleaning woman come in once a week. On
Friday nights and Saturday afternoons he went to the horse races
with his friend Jock Simmons, and after the races they would
invariably come back to the house, stand with their backs to the
fireplace, and drink scotch.
Her tears as she held the dog biscuit underwear were for what might
have been as well as for what was.
She turned from the window and went into the kitchen. It was time
for her bread and milk.
The ringing phone startled her and she spilled a little milk on the
grey arborite table. It took six rings for her to reach the hall.
She always counted the rings. It was Enid.
"Don't get the steak at George's," she said, "it was terrible last
week. Pick it up at Eaton's."
Enid did not believe in preamble. No foolish "Hello, Mother." She
was extremely busy at work.
"What do you want?" Mary asked. "Porterhouse?"
"That's fine. Goodbye."
Enid had steak on Thursday, fish on Friday, hamburgers on Saturday,
roast beef on Sunday, cold beef on Monday, pork chops on Tuesday,
and lamb on Wednesday. They were both comfortable with this routine
and never varied it.
She shuffled down the hall to her bedroom, the bread and milk
forgotten. It was a chore getting dressed these days, and she
struggled with the corset and stockings. It was hard to find
stockings these days   those stockings and underpants in one were
becoming so popular. She wound her long grey hair into a bun and
speared it to her head with pins, then went to the bathroom to
pluck her teeth out of the little blue bowl.
She caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror and
studied it for a moment. It won't be long now, she thought.

The porterhouse at Eaton's looked good, so she chose one, put it in
her string shopping bag, and headed for the escalator.
Tired now, she looked neither right nor left as she passed
cosmetics and purses. Even with the wretched cane she moved like a
snail. Impatient younger people   and they were all younger
flowed past like water around a rock.
She reached the revolving doors and headed down the block toward
the bus stop. She was only twenty yards from its blessed bench when
her foot caught, sending her sprawling. The cane flew in one
direction, her purse in another.
She lay there a moment, winded, shocked; she could feel blood
trickling down her shins from her knees. Someone said, "Are you
alright, ma'am?" and she felt hands under her arms. She managed to
reply, "Yes, yes," as she was lifted to her feet. She turned to
look at her benefactor. He was young, with a beard and long hair.
As he bent to pick up the purse, she took three steps toward him
and swung the steak in its shopping bag at his head. He dropped the
purse and gaped at her, and she hit him again.
"You're crazy, lady," he said, and backed off, and she retrieved
the purse and cane and limped toward the bench.
It was the second incident of violence in her life.
The first time, William and Jock had been standing in front of the
fire, rocking back and forth on their heels, glasses in hand.
William had said (as he said every Saturday), "Good stuff, Jock."
"That it is," Jock had replied, "that it is."
She had been hauling a pail of ashes from the furnace when she
glanced into the living room at the familiar scene. She grabbed a
clinker out of the pail and threw it at them, but it missed and
shattered on the mantelpiece. A small piece hit William on the
forehead and left a black mark.
"You're crazy, woman," he had hollered.

She thought of stopping at George's for the new copy of Photoplay; she
couldn't believe that idiot Eddie Fisher had left Debbie for
Elizabeth Taylor. But the weariness had settled like a weight on
her shoulders, and she headed straight to the apartment. It took
time to climb two flights of stairs   up three steps, pause to a
count of ten, then up another three.
Inside the apartment she collapsed on Enid's big blue club chair.
"I should peel the potato," she thought, "and the carrot."
She put her head back, closed her eyes, and wakened with a start,
disoriented, her neck stiff. She limped to the kitchen, and was
shocked to see the clock read 5:15.
The phone took nine rings to reach this time.
Enid again.
"I'm not coming home," she said. "I've run into Laura and we're
going for a drink and dinner."
She cooked the steak anyway and ate a small piece, along with the
vegetables. It had been years since she had eaten steak.
After dinner she went to her room, undressed, and put on a
flannelette nightgown. Having washed her face, she put her teeth in
the blue bowl, took the pins out of her bun, and washed her scraped
knees. She lay in bed thinking about the day, about the scoundrel
who had tried to steal her purse. She thought about poor Debbie
Reynolds, and about Enid.
Reaching for the lamp on the bedside table, she turned the switch
and struggled out of bed. At the kitchen door she flipped the wall
switch, picked up the yellow stool and carried it back to the
bedroom. Standing on the stool, she could just reach the hat box on
the top shelf of the closet. It was in the box, as she thought. The
old fox boa. She had been so proud of it fifty years ago. It looked
now as if it had died of mange, but the glass eyes still looked
alive, as if they had refused to die with the rest of the animal.
She walked across the hall to Enid's room and pulled the sheets and
blankets free from the foot of the bed. Carefully judging the
distance, she placed the limp furry thing a quarter of the way up
and straightened the bedclothes, smoothing them with her hands. It
didn't leave much of a lump at all.
She climbed back into her bed, adjusted the pillows, and smiled.
"I'll bet Enid will say I'm crazy," she thought as she drifted to
sleep.

The Born O'Dowds
Mary Frost

"Don't interfere between born O'Dowd's," my sister-in-law snapped when
I spoke up.
There were five of us gathered in Hannah's sitting room that
morning. Harry and Hannah were standing, squaring off across the
hearth rug; that was how my husband and his sister had started most
days of our holiday so far. Suzie and Jon, our daughter and son,
were draped over armchairs, in adolescent boredom. I was by the
door. I'd just come in from the kitchen, where I'd been hiding
among the breakfast dishes and listening to the news.
The morning battle over what we'd do was a sort of scheduled event.
Today it was about our picnic. Hannah wanted to go to Garrettstown.
Harry wanted to go to Oysterhaven. Meanwhile, the weather forecast
was for rain over the whole south coast. But when it came to arm-
wrestling between born O'Dowds, weather wasn't a factor. I turned
on my heel and marched upstairs to sit on the bed.
After a few minutes, the kids joined me. We were Hannah's guests.
This room, which by Hannah's arrangement I shared with Suzie, was
Resistance Headquarters. Harry and Jon had the room next door.
We sat on the bed, eating chocolate from my secret stash. We melted
Aero chunks in our mouths and waited for the final score to be
posted below. Not that we didn't know how it would go. Hannah was
for Garrettstown; that's where we'd end up.
"I want to go home," said Suzie. She'd been saying that in answer
to everything all week.
"We're here till Sunday," said Jon, "and nothing you or I can say
will change that, so pipe down."
"Stop squabbling," I said, wearily.
"Don't interfere between born O'Dowds," said Jon. His voice was a
caricature of Hannah's. While Suzie and I spluttered with laughter,
he launched into his script about The Family. He'd quite a routine
worked up by this time. Eventually, we were trying to subdue the
noise. After all, we were guests.
Later we sat in the car, condensation streaming down the inside of
the windows. Outside, it was pouring rain.
"Well, even if we can't see the sea, we know that it's there. And
we can hear it." Hannah was on the defensive.
"Oh, it's there alright," said Jon. He, Suzie and I were in the
back seat having fun. As he spoke, he squeezed a drop of water from
a sandwich for our entertainment. We'd started our picnic on the
sand dunes with Hannah resolutely maintaining that the rain was
only a shower. Now we and the food were soaked   to Hannah's
discomfort and to our black-hearted delight.
"I knew we should have gone to Oysterhaven," said Harry. And it
started again.

The born O'Dowds. I am grateful to Hannah for expressing so neatly
what after twenty-five years of marriage I had come to accept.
Becoming an O'Dowd was not a thing you could do by marriage. Hannah
and Harry, Susan and Jon were born O'Dowds. I, though no longer a
Kelly, was only an O'Dowd wife, a sub-species, not of the Blood
Royal.
Don't misunderstand me. We're not talking aristocracy here. The
O'Dowd grandparents had a small poultry business in a side street
  an O'Dowd who married an O'Dowd, no relative, had started it all.
Two generations later, Hannah and Harry were born in a very
ordinary little house in a hinge district between a good
residential area and a poor one. It's believing that you're a cut
above the rest, not actually being it, that works.
Hannah and Harry were brainwashed all their lives. The price of
that was isolation, the domestic equivalent of Racial Purity. They
did not have friends, because that might challenge The Great
Conviction. On occasions, they had cousins to tea.
Hannah got control of Harry early on. When he went out to play, she
went too. In school, she was four years ahead, but that didn't stop
her keeping a strict eye on him. Even then, I think, she'd made him
her life's work. As an O'Dowd, he was under a special interdict
against playing in mud or fighting or tearing his clothes. Enough
of that, and no one in the class would go near him. If they did,
they put themselves in the way of being supervised by Hannah. Harry
was a lonely little boy.
As a young man, he'd held out against his father's plan to have him
working in the shop only because Hannah supported him. He wanted to
work in a bank and she felt he ought to. He had a good head for
figures, and nice manners; he'd be a manager in no time. She'd take
care of the shop herself. She was already running the family; the
family business must have seemed like a logical next step.
So Harry got a job in the bank, and he was sent to Croom, fifty
miles away. That's overseas in O'Dowd strategic planning. That's
how I met him. If you ignored his little delusion, he was a
pleasant specimen, serious, awkward and young.
Let me introduce myself. I'm Hilary. I was working in the bank, not
because it was my vocation, but because it was a job   reasonably
well paid, clean and respectable. I'd have preferred to go to
university, study English, maybe; but I was the eldest of six
children. There just wasn't money for that. I could still read
though. I got Ifor-Evans's A Short History of English Literature
small enough not to intimidate me   and began to work my way
through it. I made up a reading list. Harry was a reader too. Soon,
we were a two-person literary group. Now that I think about it,
that was how it all started: trips to the library and coffee-and-
chat. Maybe it's as well that I didn't go to university. We bogged
down somewhere around Keats and Shelley. The Romantics. Harry
locked on to me as his romantic target and wouldn't let go. That
rather side-tracked our systematic reading plans. I'm a fairly
passive creature: what I can't change, I accept. After a short
siege, I accepted Harry.
My family is very like the O'Dowds in lacking any social
distinction. Except that the Kellys don't even manage a myth. I
doubt the O'Dowds were pleased with what Harry brought home, but
they put up with me. I'd be tolerable breeding stock. I was
healthy, fairly civilized, and my uncle was a priest.

When I married Harry, I inherited the O'Dowd cookbook, a hand-written
collection of some of the blandest recipes on earth. No salt. No
spices. No herbs. Lots of chicken.
The first night Hannah came to supper, she downed tools over my
attempt at Chicken Meatloaf. I'd added onions, poultry seasoning,
black pepper and salt   hardly a revolution.
"This isn't Mother's meatloaf," she protested. Her devotion to
Meatloaf O'Dowd was heroic; a martyrdom I would have called it.
"No, it isn't," I agreed. "It's my meatloaf; this is the way we
like it." She looked at me as if I'd uttered a heresy.
Initially, Hannah tried, by disapproval and disparagement, to
direct me back to the path of culinary orthodoxy. She made her
preferences very clear. But I knew what Harry liked. I knew what he
chose when we ate out and he had a menu to choose from. He loved
Indian food, for instance. He'd taught himself to make a pretty
decent curry.
Eventually, Hannah gave up. She sniffed at the food that I offered
her.
"She's just a dainty eater," I told Harry. Put like that, he
believed it. An O'Dowd compliment carried for him an inherent aura
of truth. After that, he didn't nag at her to eat   and believe me,
she could go on a dry fast as far as I was concerned. So she eased
off on coming to supper; and mother's recipes went from strength to
strength.

Susan was born. Green eyes, red hair and bold as brass. Harry adored
her. So did I, but I was less intense about it. Jonathan arrived
two years later: a boy to carry on the family name. No one danced
a jig, but there was triumph in the air. He even had Harry's brown
eyes, which seemed to seal his lineage.
One girl, one boy: the original pattern repeated. There was a
general assumption that the family was complete. We left it at
that.
Harry was promoted. We moved west, then to Tipperary, and
eventually to Dublin. Harry's mother died and the bereaved Joseph,
though he survived four more years, withdrew from living. Hannah
took over the shop. She could handle all of it except the staff. As
soon as she trained them, they went off to work in the meat
departments of supermarkets all over town.
"I'm just running a free training school for those places." Hannah
was right about that. One year, she trained   and lost   four good
assistants. The following year, she sold out. She got a good price
for the business too. She assumed the O'Dowd name was the reason
for that   an established business, known in the town. She phoned
us the day she went by and found they were refurbishing and
renaming it. "The Poultry Market" was painted over the door. She
was in tears. If she'd had the least idea...if she'd dreamed they
could be so stupid, she'd have made it a condition of sale. She
tried to get hold of the old name-board but the jobbing builder
who'd ripped it out and dumped it was unhelpful. He'd too much to
do to humour this old biddy who wanted him to find one worm-eaten
old board somewhere under the remains of a wall.
After her father died, Hannah lived on in the old house, everything
crumbling around her. The carpets wore threadbare; they were not to
be replaced. A sort of grime settled. It was in the chairs and in
the walls. Ultimately, or perhaps primarily, it was in the soul of
the house.
Now that Hannah had no other interest, she focused on us. Twice a
year, she visited. Twice a year, we visited her. I could never
decide which was worse. Soon, Jon no longer tolerated her. At
visiting time, he took off to my parents or to friends of his own.
He was more Kelly than O'Dowd in some ways. The more Jon avoided
Hannah, the more she became obsessed with him. He was her Great
White Hope.
Harry, though he could never ensure his own liberty, was always
careful to see that the kids kept theirs. When Suzie chose Art
school, he wasn't thrilled about it, but he gave her what help he
could. When Jon decided on law, Harry was really pleased, but he
kept it to himself in case his gratification became a pressure.
"Doesn't Dad like what I'm planning to do?" Jon asked, one day in
the kitchen.
"Yes, he does; he's thrilled, "but he's trying to hide it in case
you might want to change your mind."
"I wondered if that was it. Look, if you haven't told Hannah
already, please don't. I can't bear to think how satisfied she'll
be."
So Jonathan told Hannah he was going to do Arts   which indeed he
was, to begin with.
"That's a waste," she said bluntly. She wanted him to do medicine.
"I'll help with the fees," she urged us. "Now you just make him see
sense."
A few years later, when he registered for law, she was walking on
air with relief. We told her on the Saturday afternoon when we met
for lunch. By dessert, she had elevated him to a judge.
Suzie fell in love with a rugby-playing engineer named Mike, a
friend of a friend. He was huge, blond and shy. He had played rugby
for Ireland, and followed Suzie around like an oversize dog.
"You could hyphenate it, of course," said Hannah. "Collins-O'Dowd."
Or was it O'Dowd-Collins?  Hannah knew, and was strong about
getting it right. Mike and Suzie took no notice   they'd be Mike
and Suzie Collins. Mike and Suzie more than any surname at all.
They weren't meant for hyphens.
Something was happening to our family. We were normalizing. A new
breeziness. The kids and their friends made it happen, I suppose.
So many comings and goings, people in and out of the house. Hannah
came to stay but rarely found us alone. She didn't like dealing
with what she called "Outsiders."
At Suzie's wedding, we had almost two hundred people. I looked
around the room and suddenly realized that, apart from Hannah and
the four of ourselves, there wasn't an O'Dowd in sight.

At Harry's funeral, we stood by the grave on a muggy April morning
with a grey mist hanging about in tatters on bushes and trees. The
family tombstone was of polished pink granite, with O'Dowd
chiselled there, large, square and black. I felt the weight of that
stone on my heart. That name had oppressed him all his life.
Implacable, it stood over him now.
As we walked back to the cars, Hannah came up beside me.
"I suppose, Hilary," she said "you'll go back to your own name
now." I stared at her. "Now you're a widow, I mean."
I couldn't believe it. She'd got Harry back. Now she'd come for the
name. We hadn't even left the graveyard.
It was Jon who spoke.
"Come on, Mum." He swept me along. "You're going to catch cold." He
put me into the car, jumped in after me and slammed the door. He
ordered the driver to drive on, and he left Hannah standing. She
could find her own way home.
I think it was then he made his decision. Then, or when I told him
I'd accepted Hannah's suggestion. I had moved back to Croom and I
was going back to my old name. I'd be Hilary Kelly, the name I knew
myself by, a persona that wasn't a relic or a second-class citizen.
I loved Harry. I'll always love him. But now I must live without
him.
I still see Hannah sometimes. We met last week, when Jonathan was
in town. He came with me. He's joining a law practice in Dublin.
He'll be happy there. From what I hear, he's thinking of marrying.
Hannah, of course, cross-questioned him about everything. She can't
wait to see his name on a brass plate. Even offered to buy it for
him if he made the arrangements.
He eyed her coolly.
"Well," he said, "there's something here that you ought to see." He
leaned down and took out of his briefcase a triangular name-plate,
the kind you see on desks. It had one brass face engraved: JONATHAN
KELLY-O'DOWD, LL.B.
"That's not your name," said Hannah, sharply. "Don't be ridiculous.
That's not your name."
"It is now," said Jon, not batting an eyelid. "I changed it by deed
poll. If my mother is a Kelly, then so am I."
Hannah turned white, and looked furious. Jon just sat there,
drinking his coffee.
"I've wanted to do it for years," he said later, "but I didn't know
how Dad would take it."
I'm staying out of it. This is between himself and Hannah. I'll
leave it to the born O'Dowd's.

So here I am, back where I started. My daughter is a Collins, and my
son is a Kelly-O'Dowd. I have a small pension, plenty of spare
time, and my old paperback copy of Ifor-Evans's A Short History of
English Literature. I've done some work on Browning already, and
there's muscular stuff ahead. If I exhaust English literature,
there's always American, though sometimes it feels like literature
has got lonelier over the years.
Apart from the occasional coffee, the other place Hannah and I tend
to meet is at the grave. It seems that every time I go there, she's
ahead of me. Maybe she lives there. Coming up the cemetery path,
I'll see her kneeling or bent round-backed over the granite
chippings in their granite frame. With a short rake, she grooms
them; or, with a trowel, she gouges out weeds. She brings her
gardening tools, though there is nothing planted, not a shrub or a
flower; nor will she allow me to plant any. The black name shows
above her and seems to bury her, maybe the rest of us. There's
something of me in that grave, and something of Jon. Under the
names of the interred, the stone reads: REST IN PEACE.

Wish
Patrick McLeod

Chris gazed at the ground to avoid his friend's face. "Does it hurt
much?" he asked quietly.
"Not much," mumbled Scott. "Maybe I'm getting used to it." He
gently probed the purple bruise that almost closed his right eye.
"What hurts most is how it makes me feel. You know, useless."
"How could your mom live with a creep like that?"
"I don't know, he's nothing like my dad was."
Chris nodded. He had really liked Scott's dad. Everyone had. He'd
been surprised when barely a year after the accident Alice Baxter
had let Bruce Wojak move in with her and Scott.
"I wish Bruce was dead," spat Scott.
The boys fell silent. Late afternoon sunshine beat on their backs,
and plumes of dust rose around their feet as they shuffled along
the abandoned bush road. Between the ruts, grass grew to their
waists. The woods were spiderwebbed with these roads, built by
loggers when AmCan Paper fired up its mill forty-three years ago.
Now, the new forest and its roads belonged to the kids of Larson's
Ridge.
In nine days the boys would start eighth grade, but today's hike
had been no end-of-summer adventure. There had been no fort
building, rabbit hunting or exploring. For Scott, today was an
escape from a home life that, in the last seven months, had become
unbearable. Chris was along to listen and to cheer up his friend.
At dawn, Scott had appeared on his doorstep, freshly bruised.
Together they'd set off down the railroad tracks. After a couple of
hours they reached the old rock quarry, where they swam in the
flooded pit, ate cold hot dogs, drank warm cokes, and lay on the
rocks smoking cigarettes scoffed from Chris's mother's pack. It
should have been a day of laughter, wild tales and dreams, but
Scott's black cloud allowed only rare smiles.
Chris found he missed the old Scott, the kid he'd known before that
night when Terry Baxter had pulled two kids out of a burning house
only to die when a barbecue propane tank exploded and drove a six-
inch piece of shrapnel through his heart. The Scott before Bruce.
Before the beatings began.
"Hey, what's that?" Chris darted into the grass alongside the road
and scooped up a bottle. "Wow! It must be a hundred years old." The
glass was clear, but dull with age; a cork was jammed into the
mouth of the long neck.
"Looks like an old whiskey bottle," said Scott.
"Looks deadly." Chris rolled the bottle from hand to hand.
"What are you going to do with it?"
A grin crept across Chris's face. "We could piss in it and put it
in your cupboard. Next time Bruce comes home shitfaced I bet he'll
drink it."
Scott broke into his first genuine smile of the day. "Christopher,
you are an A-1 frigging genius. Bruce doing the chug on a bottle of
my whiz. Ultimate." The boys broke into a fit of laughter.
"You may have the first honour, sir," Chris said, and cradled the
bottle like a waiter.
"Why, thank you, my good man." Scott pulled the cork, then, one
hand around the neck, unzipped his fly.
"Let 'er go, dude," cheered Chris.
"Hello there."
"Wha...?" Chris and Scott jumped, and spun toward the voice. Ten
feet away stood an old man. A white T-shirt and greying beard
glared against his black suit and black skin.
"W...who are you?" stammered Scott.
"Why don't you tuck that thing away and I'll tell you." The
stranger pointed a gnarled, silver-tipped cane at Scott's crotch.
"Or are you trying to tan it?"
The bottle dropped to the dirt. Scott's face flamed as he fumbled
with his fly.
"Shit!" cried Chris as he danced away from the spreading puddle of
urine.
A wide grin broke out behind the stranger's salt-and-pepper beard,
cracking the wrinkles on his face. "You guys always this funny?"
"You always sneak up on people in the middle of nowhere?"  snapped
Chris.
"Name's Cyrus." He took off the BoSox cap that looked as if it had
been on his head since they last won the series, and wiped a sleeve
across his forehead. "You boys have anything to drink besides
that?" He poked a chin at the bottle.
"No. Sorry," said Scott.
"Nothing to apologize for," said Cyrus. His gaze lingered on Scott.
"Quite a shiner you got there, son."
Scott looked at the ground.
"He fell," said Chris. "So, where you from? I've never seen you
before."
"I pass through from time to time." Cyrus turned to Scott. "I'd say
it looks like you fell against someone's fist."
"You a hobo or something?" asked Chris, determined to stop the old
man's prying.
"Or something," answered Cyrus without turning from Scott.  "Did
someone put a beating on you, Scott?"
Scott's head snapped up. "How'd you know my name?"
"Was it your mother's boyfriend?"
Chris moved between Scott and the old man. "Who the hell are you?"
he demanded, chest puffed out. A scrapper and big for thirteen,
almost as big as Cyrus, Chris spread his legs and clenched his
fists. The old man's dark eyes stared through him.
"I can help you, Scott." Cyrus's voice was deep and flat.  "All you
have to do is ask."
Scott backpeddled nervously. "I...I'm not supposed to talk to
strangers," he stammered. "I gotta go."
"I'll be there when you need me, Scott." Urgency tinged Cyrus's
words. "You will need me." He took a step to follow, but Chris laid
a fist on the old man's chest.
"Leave him alone, Grampa."
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. "You best go after your friend, boy."
They glared at each other until Chris, without breaking eye
contact, backed away. After ten yards, he stopped and jabbed a
finger in the old man's direction. "Stay away from him!" Then he
turned and trotted toward where Scott waited on the edge of a hay
field.

Halfway across Porcupine Gibbon's back forty they looked back and
saw Cyrus standing on the road, still watching them.
"He sure gave me the creeps," Scott said.
"Don't sweat it, he's just some crazy old bum."
"Yeah, but he knew stuff about me."
"Are you kidding? Gossip in this town runs faster than the roaches
behind Blowhole Hurley's grill. Anyone who stops long enough to
pick his nose gets the lowdown on your mom and Bruce."
They deserted the hay field for the gravel of Dublin Road.
"You think so?" asked Scott, unconvinced.
"Yeah, I think so, girlie man. Now light up, I gotta get home."

Scott heard it before he opened the door: Bruce's voice, loud, drunk,
overwhelming Alice Baxter's whimpering.
"Where is it, bitch?" he roared.
Scott froze in the doorway. His mom was on the floor. Bruce loomed
over her. Muscles strained his sleeves, a beer gut hid his belt.
Alice tried to crawl out of range of Bruce's biker boots, but a
hand stained with engine grease grabbed a fistful of blouse and
yanked her to her knees.
"Where..is...the goddamn money?" His right hand hung over her, palm
open.
"It..it's for the house, Bruce," she cried. A trickle of blood ran
from one corner of her mouth. "They're going to take it away."
SMACK
Her head snapped back.
"Leave her alone, you bastard!" Scott charged, head down. Bruce
dropped Alice and sidestepped the attack. He hooked an arm under
Scott's belly and flipped him on to the dining room table. Scott
crashed on his back, scattering beer cans and cigarette butts. A
chair gouged his spine as he slid to the floor.
"Didn't get enough last night, you little shit?" Bruce kicked away
the chair and yanked Scott to his feet. Scott dangled helplessly,
the wind knocked out of him.
"Bruce! No!" Alice staggered toward them, clawing a wad of bills
from her pocket. "Here. Don't hurt him."
Bruce threw Scott into the wall and snatched the money. "That's
better," he growled as he stomped out.
"Scotty, are you all right?" Alice knelt beside her son and held
him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry."
Scott caught his breath. Hate blazed in his eyes. "Why do you take
that crap, Mom? He's nothing but an asshole. He's going to kill
you." He spat out the words in a way he never talked to his mother.
"I don't know, baby. He gets so angry when he drinks. It bothers
him that he can't find work."
"Stop making excuses," Scott snapped. "He can't find work because
he doesn't look for it. He's lazy. He's a drunk. He's mean. The
only time he's not bullying someone is when he's too drunk to
stand."
"I know," she answered quietly, avoiding his eyes.
Scott's heart ached. Alice was beautiful, but the last couple of
years had taken their toll. Strands of grey had crept into her dark
hair. Faint scars and worry lines worked outward from her eyes and
from a mouth that had forgotten how to smile. Make-up was caked on
fading bruises.
"He terrifies me." Her voice cracked. "When he's around I want to
crawl into a hole and hide."
"Then leave him."
"And go where? This is our home, at least until the bank takes it
away. I can't throw him out. There's no one in this lousy town I
can turn to. If I have him arrested he'll be back... in a day, a
week, a month. Then it'll be worse. And not just for me; he'll go
after you. That would hurt more than anything he could do to me,
Scotty. Try to understand."
Scott couldn't answer. All he had to offer was a fierce hug.

Scott lay in bed, unable to sleep. His emotions ricocheted from
concern for his mother to hate for Bruce to frustration at his
helplessness.
Bruce stumbled in around midnight, cursing every time he stumbled
into a wall or piece of furniture.
Scott clenched his fists and blinked back tears when, on the other
side of the wall, his mother's protests were silenced by a slap.
Soon the rhythmic squeak of their mattress started. It went on
forever. The drunker Bruce was, the longer it took.
Scott dressed quickly, snitched a smoke from Bruce's pack and
sneaked out of the house. He walked to the end of the street,
moving quietly past old lady Farnsdale's   the slightest noise
after dark and old bat ears would be dialing her hot line to the
cops. Asphalt turned to gravel that rose up a small hill, beyond
which sat the town's baseball diamond. With the last streetlight
far behind and the moon barely a sliver, he crested the hill in
near darkness.
The ball field was set at the bottom of a natural depression thirty
feet deep which had been made, if town legend could be believed,
thousands of years ago by a meteor. On summer nights half the town
turned out to watch the ball games. Even when it rained they came;
a downpour could turn even the most boring game into a hilarious
bout of swampball.
Hands buried in his pockets, Scott headed for the dim outline of
the backstop bleachers. He sat halfway up and lit the cigarette. A
distant whistle blew as a CPR freight neared Gull's Mouth, a
reservation four miles down the track. Scott looked out beyond
centre field where the tracks exited the forest. "One thousand one,
one thousand two, one thousand three...," he counted in a whisper.
It was a game his father had taught him: count the seconds from the
time the whistle sounded in Gull's Mouth until the train bolted
from the trees at the ball field, then figure out its speed.
"...one thousand fifteen, one thousand sixtee..."
"Hello, Scott."
The cigarette flew from his hand as he jumped back. He tripped over
a bench and rolled down two more before stopping himself.
"Scott, wait," called Cyrus as the boy found his feet, leapt the
remaining benches and hit the ground running. "Please!"
Something in the man's voice stopped him. Scott turned to face the
dim figure by the bleachers. He hooked the fingers of one hand
through the chain link backstop and readied himself for a frantic
scurry to the top.
"What do you want?" Only the white triangle of T-shirt beneath
Cyrus's coat was visible.
"I'm here to help you, Scott."
"Help? With what?" Scott pressed his back against the fence. A
distant rumble drifted out of the trees.
"With Bruce. He's dangerous."
"I know what Bruce is."
"Do you?" Cyrus stepped forward.
"Don't come near me," shouted Scott, one foot on the backstop. "All
right." Cyrus sat down in the bleachers. "Scott, Bruce Wojak is an
evil man. He has to be stopped."
"Look, Mister, I don't know who you are or why you keep following
me, so why don't you leave me alone?"
"I can't," said Cyrus, "I'm your friend. You need me."
"Yeah, I've heard of friends like you." Scott tried to sound like
Chris when he cocked off to an adult. "You follow little kids
around and..."
Cyrus whacked his cane against the bench. "Somebody is going to
die!"
The sound of the approaching train grew louder.
"Who?" Scott asked, unaware that his fierce grip on the fence was
drawing blood.
"I can't say," answered Cyrus, his anger gone as fast as it
appeared.
Confused, Scott stared at the old man. Part of him wanted to trust
Cyrus, but something deep inside wouldn't allow it.
"There's all kinds of people out there who'll try to use you,
Scotty."
Scott sat beside his dad on the shore of Larson's Lake, searching
for a stone flat enough to beat his father's eleven-skipper.
"You can listen to them, but don't let them make up your mind. Be
your own person, make your own choices and you'll be all right.
Even your mistakes will be your own. Do you understand, son?"
Scott looked into his father's green eyes and decided that being as
good as this man would be the best that he could want.
Across the field, the first licks of a powerful headlight glinted
off the tracks.
"Stop Bruce Wojak," whispered Cyrus.
"How?" said Scott.
The light grew until it spilled over the tracks and onto the field.
The train burst into sight; its airhorn hacked through the night.
Scott spun around, caught off guard by the blast.
When he turned back, the old man was gone.
"Holy shi...," he gasped. Blood ran down his arm as the fence cut
deeper into his hand. A scary feeling grew in his gut until, unable
to stand it, he yanked himself off the fence and ran like hell.
Even the threat of Bat Ears Farnsdale calling the cops failed to
slow or quiet him as he bolted for home.

Alice had gone to work when Scott woke. Bruce's snores drifted from the
next room. Scott dressed quickly, grabbed a couple of Pop-Tarts and
left. Bruce was almost as mean hung over as he was drunk.
Retracing his steps from last night, Scott found himself back on
the backstop bleachers. He chewed on the Pop-Tarts without tasting
them and tried to decide if last night's encounter had been a
dream. An hour later, when he'd almost convinced himself it had
been, he saw something between the benches, cradled in a mound of
dry leaves and crumpled candy wrappers, glinting in the sunlight.
As Scott stared at the shiny metal, the sound of the cane smacking
the bench echoed in his mind. It was the tip from Cyrus's cane --
it had to be. The need to touch it, to believe it was real, forced
him to lay on the bleachers and reach out. Dangling precariously,
he managed to slip a finger into the cylinder's hollow end. "Try
and dream this away, Baxter," he muttered as he rolled the piece of
silver in his palm.
A rock arched over the bleachers and smacked Scott's wrist.
"Hey, dickhead. Whatchya doin'?" grinned Chris from the ground. A
baseball glove dangled from one hand.
"Chris! God, am I glad to see you!" Scott leapt off the bleachers
and ran to his friend. "You're not going to believe this."
"Hey!" Chris jumped back. "You're not going to kiss me, are you?"
"Don't be an asshole. Listen. Remember that old man we saw
yesterday? I saw him again last night. He told me if I didn't do
something about Bruce, someone was going to di..."
"Whoa!" Chris held up his hands. "What are you talking about,
Baxter? What old guy?"
"The old black guy dressed like a preacher. Called himself Cyrus."
"You been drinking Bruce's coffee or what? I think I'd remember an
old black guy named Cyrus, dressed like a preacher yet."
"But...."  Scott could manage no more. He'd known Chris long enough
to tell whether he was lying or not.
"Face it, Baxter, I'm too smart for any of your stupid tricks."
Chris shook his head. "So, you wanna play flies? Some of the guys
are coming down."
Scott barely heard him. He plopped down on the bench and stared
blankly.
"You gonna play?"
"Uh...I don't think so, I've got some things to do." He squeezed
the bit of silver metal.
Chris stared at him for a moment. "You all right, Scotty. That
asshole been whacking you again?"
Scott shrugged.
"Hey." Chris put a hand on Scott's shoulder. "It can't last
forever."
Four bikes, accompanied by whoops and shouts, flew over the hill
and barrelled towards the ballfield. The lead bike braked late and
thudded into the fence hard enough to shake three sections.
Chris held up his glove. "If you change your mind," he said. Then
he turned and bounded onto the field, shouting, "Dorfman, you lame
dick." Hoots of laughter filled the air as Rob Dorfman rubbed his
head. Even Scott managed a brief grin, but by the time the boys
settled into their game he'd stolen away and disappeared up one of
the paths behind the diamond.
Hands in pockets, he shuffled down a bike-worn trail that wound
through the woods and ended at Larson's Lake.
Hours later, tormented by unanswered questions, he found himself at
his back door. As he reached to open the door, he stopped. The
doorknob stared up at him but his hand would not move toward it.
Sweat broke out across his forehead. Not a sound came from inside.
In unbearable slow motion, Scott willed himself to open the door.
There was Bruce at the dining room table, his red eyes glaring
through a cloud of cigarette smoke. A half-empty beer stood on the
table beside the scattered contents of a purse.
Alice was nowhere in sight.
Someone is going to die.
Eyes locked on Bruce, Scott inched past the cupboards and into the
hall. A sense of terror made each step feel forced. At his mother's
bedroom, he paused, held his breath, and gently pushed the door.
"Mom?" he whispered.
On the bed, a sheet covered a still figure.
Someone is going to die.
Scott edged closer. "Mom?"
No movement.
...going to die.
He took hold of the sheet...
...die.
and yanked it back.
Naked, Alice jumped as if stung and pushed herself into a ball
against the headboard. She quivered, eyes wide in terror.
Horrified, Scott could only stare. Welts laced her back.  Blood
stained her arms. On one hip were five letters transposed in a red
bruise on her skin:

                              COORS

The raised COORS that emblazoned Bruce's belt buckle.
Alice tried feebly to cover herself. "Oh God, Scotty."
He was gone. Through the house, out the door. He bolted across the
back yard, but got no further than the garage before he threw up.
When the heaving stopped, he slid to the ground beside the bile,
head on his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks.
As he lifted his eyes, the old man was squatting in front of him.
"Help me," whispered Scott.

For the next three days Bruce was almost human. Although he was still
miserable and moody, his words were less abrasive and he didn't
raise a hand to either Scott or Alice. It was as if whipping Alice
had satisfied him. Alice missed work on Friday, but by Sunday she
was able to get around without appearing to be in pain. Long-
sleeved turtlenecks and makeup hid most of the damage.
On the third night Scott lay in bed considering what Cyrus had said
in the alley: In the drawer beside their bed is your answer. Bruce
will be remembered as the person who bought it.
I can't.
You have to. It's the only way to stop him.
It's wrong.
Sometimes, son, it takes a wrong to make a right.

Monday, supper was a tightrope. Bruce slipped back into an ugly mood,
shoved aside his plate and took a swig of beer. Alice made an
attempt at small talk, but a cruel stare silenced her. Scott picked
at his food without looking up from his plate.
When dinner ended Bruce lumbered off to watch the Tigers-Jays game.
As Scott headed for his room, he passed his mother's bedroom   he'd
never been able to refer to it as Bruce's   and stopped. Beside the
bed stood a small table. On top sat a lamp made of driftwood, and
a clock radio. A few paperbacks were scattered on the shelf below,
and in between was the drawer. Its brass knob beckoned. Scott
glanced down the hall. In the kitchen, dishes clattered under
running water. At the edge of the living room, the top of Bruce's
head was visible over the back of the La-Z-Boy.
Scott drew a breath and tiptoed across the room. He slipped open
the drawer.
Half buried beneath some folded papers, a small box of Kleenex (as
if Bruce used anything but his sleeve) and a handful of Sheiks,
blue-black metal glistened. Brass shell bottoms peeked out from the
two visible cylinders.
Scott closed his eyes and shut the drawer. What had he gotten
int...
"What the fuck are you doing in here?"
Scott spun. Bruce filled the doorway.
"Nothing," he stammered.
"Out, you little shit!"
Scott scurried past, taking a cuff on the head that made his ears
ring.
"Don't ever let me catch you in here again!"
Curled up on his bed, Scott tried not to think about the gun and
the consequences of using it. He thought about his father and about
Cyrus. He thought about his mother.
Finally it came down to one simple question: What would Dad do?
The answer came fast, too fast. "I can't, Mom," he whispered in the
dying light. "I'm sorry."
Sleep arrived with a nightmare. Scott was a bullet crammed into a
brass casing. An explosion shot him down a dark tunnel. He burst
into light at a speed that pulled his skin back. Ahead stood Bruce,
grinning, Alice's severed head clutched in one hand. He picked up
speed, eyes locked on Bruce's forehead. But it wasn't Bruce, it was
a huge mirror. The image of Bruce faded as Scott's own image filled
the mirror. He twisted and turned to change course.
He screamed as the glass shattered.

Tuesday morning, Scott was gone before the first rays of dawn tickled
the rooftops. For hours, he haunted the ballpark and roamed the old
roads behind Porcupine Gibbon's hayfield looking for Cyrus. Late
that night, after the room on the other side of the wall fell
silent, he slipped back to the ballfield and spent a couple of
hours shivering on the bleachers, but no voice hailed him from the
darkness.
The next day was the same. And the next.
Then it was Friday, four days before the start of the new school
year.
Late afternoon. As he entered the driveway after another fruitless
search, Scott snapped out of his daze. Glass littered the walk
beside the house, some pieces flat and clear, the rest, the brown
curved remnants of a beer bottle. Blue gingham curtains billowed
out a jagged hole that had once been the kitchen window. No sounds
came from the house, no flying furniture, nothing.
Maybe Bruce was dead. That flicker of hope burned out before it
could spark. Maybe his mother...
Scott bolted for the door and burst into the kitchen. Bruce was at
the far end of the dining room, his face streaked with blood,
Alice's throat clamped in his hands. She flailed feebly, her toes
barely touching the floor. Blood flowed from her nose and mouth.
Her face was purple.
Scott flew toward them, blinded by fury, a ninety-six pound
kamikaze. He buried his shoulder in Bruce's ribs.
"Fu...." Scott's momentum drove Bruce away from Alice and danced
him out of the dining room and across the living room where they
crashed into the front door. Bruce screamed. Scott staggered back
and stared, horrified. Behind him, Alice gagged for air. Bruce
tried to straighten and howled. Scott realized the crack he'd heard
had come from the doorknob smashing into Bruce's ribs.
Scott turned to run but Bruce lunged and nailed him, drove him
across the kitchen and into the refrigerator. Air burst from
Scott's lungs. As a fist crashed into his temple, sparks exploded
in his eyes and drove red-hot spikes to the back of his skull.
Another fist found his jaw. Broken teeth slashed his mouth and
tongue. Scott slid to the floor as Bruce's steel-toed boot zeroed
in.  "NOOO!!" screamed Alice. Across the room she clawed the wall
to drag herself upright.
Scott squirmed. The steel toe missed and scarred the refrigerator
door; the boot heel tore his cheek open. Alice appeared behind
Bruce. She grabbed the roast pan from the stove. Steam seeped from
under its lid. Bruce's foot came forward. The pan banged down,
spewing hot juices.
Bruce stumbled and clawed at his scalding shirt. His scream became
an enraged bellow as he yanked out a cupboard drawer and snatched
a carving knife from its spilling cutlery. He lunged at Alice.
"Run, Scotty!" she shrieked. The knife arched down. Alice ducked.
The blade vanished into the wall.
Someone is going to die.
Mouth full of blood, one eye closed, Scott dragged himself to his
feet and lurched down the hall toward the bedroom.
Alice stumbled into the living room.
Someone is going to die.
Bruce ripped the knife from the wall and charged.
Scott forgot his pain as the gun, black and ugly, stared up at him.
A hand no longer his own reached out and clutched the cold,
hypnotizing metal. He hesitated, confused, then sprinted into the
living room. Alice was on the floor. Bruce straddled her, one hand
on her throat, the knife above his head.
"YOU..."  screamed Bruce.
Scott's arm came up.
"FUCKING..."
Over the barrel, he saw Bruce's chest heave.
"BITCH!"
The knife came down. The gun roared. A dime-size red hole appeared
in Bruce's forehead. Behind him blood showered the television. The
knife spun away, and for a split second before he slumped to the
carpet Bruce's dead eyes locked on Scott.

Scott roamed the deserted ballfield. It was the opening day of school but
he had no desire to be there and nobody insisted. It was the first
time since the shooting that he'd been alone.
The police had taken his statement countless times: how he'd
accidentally discovered the gun only days before he'd used it   had
been forced to use it. The lie came easily and was readily
accepted. No charges would be laid. All agreed it had been the only
thing to do.
A seven-year-old Scott stared into his father's face, one hand
clamped around a Lone Ranger cap gun. Terry Baxter squatted and
gently put his hands on his son's waist. "Killing someone, even for
pretend, is wrong." He took a deep breath. "I wanted to kill a man
once. I hated him and was very angry. I had a gun, a real one, and
was ready to use it, but I didn't. I wouldn't have been able to
live with myself."
Scott came upon a sparrow, stiff in death, barely offered it a
glance, and kept walking. The four days since the shooting had
turned him into a bitter, lonely young man. He didn't like the new
Scott. He hated his mother for bringing Bruce into his life. He
hated Chris for calling him Dirty Harry.
That night, Cyrus appeared in the half-light at the foot of his
bed. "How's it going, Scott?"
"How do you think?"
"I'm sorry," the old man said. "It had to be done."
"Do you know what you've done to me?"
"I do."
A heavy silence settled between them, a confused angry boy and a
tired old man.
"Do you want things as they were?" Cyrus broke the stand-off.
Scott felt a glimmer of hope rise and fade. "No," he said quietly.
"It's done."
"Then I'd better be going."
Cyrus hesitated a moment, waiting for a response, and faded into
darkness.
"Hey," said Scott.
Cyrus reappeared.
Scott reached into the drawer beside his bed and pulled out the
silver cane tip. He flipped it to Cyrus. "For the next time you
feel like helping someone."
Cyrus's voice cracked. "Sometimes," he said, "two wrongs do make a
right."
"You're a bastard."
"Yes," he said quietly, "I am."
Outside, a breeze had come up and the first drops of rain sounded
against the window. Scott leaned over, closed the drawer in the
bedside table, and lay staring into the darkness. The rain came
harder, and he drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Step Lightly
Karen Keeley Wiebe

Every wall in the apartment was cracked, the paint and plaster peeling.
The window mouldings were soft with rot. Sometimes the radiators
bled water onto the wooden floor, and she sopped it up with an old
sock, thinking: What's been forgotten is mine. Once she found a
pair of cotton jockey shorts mummified in the hall closet. She
thought they must be Jerry's but she wasn't sure.
Six men in six months and she was still trying to identify the
scent of their aftershave.
At first light two pigeons would roost on the kitchen window ledge.
They strutted, they cooed, they flapped their wings. Sometimes they
stayed, and she would think of them as two feathered statues behind
glass. She would find herself crying, the wet sock hanging from her
hand.
One morning in April she grabbed the kettle and filled it. She
rummaged in the cupboard, knocking aside puddings and pasta until
her hands descended on two packages of Jello. She had purchased the
boxes   one lime, one strawberry   in anticipation of a Christmas
that had come and gone in a flash of noisy laughter capped by a
night of mechanical sex. Jerry had wanted to party and it had to be
the Prince Arthur Hotel, and it was her Aunt Charlotte's Dresden
lamp that inspired her to try something new. She had worn silk and
lace and a powdered wig, and had highlighted her 18th-century
veneer with rouged cheeks and Rosette lipstick slicked across her
lopsided grin. A pirouette here, a curtsey there, and later, the
shimmering brocade dropping in folds at her feet. The soft light
from the bedside lamp had accented her creamy afterglow. "You're
very good," Jerry had told her, and she smiled and said, "Aren't I,
though?"
She poured the red Jello powder into a fluted bowl, added the
boiling water and stirred. Inhaling steam team and the scent of
strawberries she placed the bowl in the refrigerator, thinking:
With time, it will set.
It was then she decided to be a secretary seeking employment and
dressed herself accordingly   a white blouse and a black pleated
skirt. The forecast was for showers, so she wore her raincoat and
a turquoise scarf. The colour matched her eyes.
The Curio Shoppe lay wedged between Thunder Bay Camera and Superior
Hardware. As she came up the street a seagull swooped down from a
corrugated roof and landed at the curb. It folded its wings, cocked
its head and watched her with an unblinking eye. As she entered the
shop she saw the interior of Aunt Charlotte's house: the polished
walnut chest lined in blue velvet, with its load of silverware,
ornate and cumbersome. "Floral Victorian," Aunt Charlotte had said.
"Brought all the way from England." She remembered holding the
teaspoons and the butter knife; the cake server had become a
magical weapon in her preschool hands. In those days she wore red
velvet, her initials embroidered on the bib of her dress, her feet
snug in white ankle socks and black patent shoes.
Her aunt's home stood beneath the lions on Marine Drive in West
Vancouver. Every inch of lawn was clipped, every hedge groomed.
Each weekend Aunt Charlotte held court, the members of her family
coming round for tea and biscuits. The men wore three-piece suits
and silk ties knotted at their throats. The women came wrapped in
sable or cashmere, white gloves on their long-fingered hands. On
sunny days there was croquet, followed by a rowdy round of
horseshoes as the older cousins came unglued. On rainy days
sparrows splashed in the birdbath and, always, Aunt Charlotte
served cold tapioca pudding. She remembered laughter and the
clinking of ice and a dry white wine to complement the sharp taste
of Cheddar. And green grapes, seedless of course, no matter what
the season.
On the wall of The Curio Shoppe: a punch bowl made of Indiana glass
with matching cups and sixteen-ounce coolers, leather-bound books,
bottles and baskets, and National Geographic hugging a stack of
Time. She smiled at the sewing basket, white wicker fading to
yellow, and at the rose-coloured bifocals lying at its side.
"You'll take this, and this, and this," Aunt Charlotte had said,
packing everything into three tattered B.C. apple boxes. She was
given a half-dozen seashells and a rust-coloured starfish; six
strawberry goblets and two brass candlesticks; a barrel cactus and
a potted palm and something her aunt called a clay-pot wine cooler;
a bamboo steamer and a pair of red rubber boots.
She had said "No" to the chunk of petrified wood but Aunt Charlotte
insisted. "You'll be on your own," she said. "You'll need these
things. To build on, to grow."
Aunt Charlotte's cheeks were as dry as onion paper, her scent a
mixture of lavender and peppermint, her stiff posture faintly
militaristic. She wore brogue shoes, and her grey hair formed a
helmet above her eyebrows.
If Aunt Charlotte is lavender, what of Jerry? Or Frank? Or Edward
and James? Paul's skin was as transparent as Chinese porcelain; red
veins shone through the tips of his ears. She remembered Michael
and the lump on his chest. A twisted sternum, he'd said. Nothing to
worry about. But his laughter had sounded strained.
She stared at antique brass, Blue Mountain pottery and Cross &
Olive crystal; saw a Brown Betty teapot on a runner of angelica
lace. Aunt Charlotte's living room with its musty scent of cloves
and cinnamon, the tinkle of ice cubes in a frosted glass, white
birch crackling in the fireplace.
On display in the shop window was a navy blue Evening in Paris
cologne bottle. She warmed the glass in her hand, and remembered
how she had delayed her leaving until the last possible moment.
"No, don't," she said waving away the offer of a bag, then smiled
as an afterthought. The clerk said, "Have-a-nice-day," and she
said, "Isn't-it-though?" and holding the bottle tight she stepped
through the doorway and onto the sidewalk. The wind whipped her
coat around her legs. The flesh on her thighs prickled, her toes
curled.
Jerry's scent came back to her as salt and sea spray frothing on
sand, the pounding of waves in the back of her skull. How could she
have forgotten? How could she choose to forget? Frank had been
cedar and spruce, his hair as stiff as pine needles. And Edward and
James? Oranges and lemons, with Florida smiles.
From her aunt's back yard she had often walked the cliffs, gazing
toward the broken shoreline where the waves surged against the
rocks, some slick with seaweed, others crusted with blue barnacles.
She imagined herself enveloped by mist, salt spray clinging to her
cheeks and eyelashes, her hair wet and cold against her face.
Sometimes she wondered if her aunt had walked these cliffs, her
youngest in her arms, the older clutching the folds of her skirt
a woman with no husband and no father, both dead in the war.
"The themes of history, my dear" her aunt had told her, "are
injustice and survival."
Clutching the blue bottle, she hurried home. The Jello had set. She
peered through the steamy kitchen window. The wind twirled dust and
grit and flung it against the glass. The pigeons were back, their
mottled bodies puffed a silvery grey. It was beyond her to make
them stay but she could try to make them comfortable.
She went out into the hallway and opened the door to the fire
escape. The cold metal stung the palms of her hands. The cardboard
box wasn't much, but she wedged it in the corner and laid the chunk
of petrified wood in the bottom. Aunt Charlotte had said it came
from Egypt, found in the desert and useless to the Bedouin because
it would not burn.
She remembered Jerry's words: "I want to peel you inside out, lick
your blood, taste your sweat, make you part of me." She had leaned
over him, her hair spilling around his face. She kissed his
forehead, each cheek, the tip of his nose. "Only God can do that,"
she said, and she laughed and jumped free of the crumpled sheets.
"Look!" she said, throwing her arms wide to the window. "A
rainbow!"
She left the fire escape and returned to the kitchen. Carrying the
bowl of Jello at arm's length she walked each room of her
apartment, stopping finally in the bathroom. At the back of the
porcelain sink she lined up the woollen sock, the mummified jockey
shorts, and the blue perfume bottle. She stepped into the tub, sat
on the edge, and thought of the ocean shaping itself to the
contours of the land, shaping, but never belonging. She dumped the
Jello at her feet. It slithered and quivered, and oozed between her
toes.
The last thing her aunt had given her was a piece of driftwood
crusted with razor-sharp barnacles. "Something from White Rock,"
the old woman had said, "a reminder to always step lightly."
She pushed her feet into the Jello again and again, seeking the
scent of strawberries.

Norris
Jake MacDonald

It was an early morning in May when the red pickup truck pulled into
the muddy yard and stopped beside the house. A young man in a denim
jacket and sunglasses got out of the truck. He crossed the yard,
mounted the crooked wooden planks that served as front steps to the
house and rapped his knuckles on the door. He waited. Out in the
junkyard a meadowlark trilled. He knocked again and the door
opened. An old woman looked out at him, her eyes crinkled against
the sun.
"Good morning, ma'am," he said. "Your neighbour tells me you might
have some pigs for sale."
The woman shook her head. "No...I'm sorry."
"Isn't this Letendre's?"
"Yes, but we don't have any pigs for sale. They're too young." She
looked into the house and spoke to someone. "Go clean that up," she
murmured. It was gloomy in the house, with the plastic sheeting
still covering the windows, and there was the raucous sound of a
television cartoon show being played too loud in the background.
A gruff male voice spoke over the TV show. "Who is it, Mum?"
The old woman glanced into the house again. "It's nobody!" she
hissed. "Go clean your room!"
"Should I come back in a week or so?" the young man persisted.
A man about forty years of age appeared in the door. "What do you
want?" He had red eyes and he needed a shave. His hair was greasy
black and it stood up in sharp hackles like the feathers on the
ravens at the dump.
"I'm looking to buy a little pig," the young man said.
The man looked at his mother. "And what did you tell him, that
they're too young?"
She turned and disappeared into the house.
The man opened the screen door and came outside. "They could be the
size of Volkswagens and she'll tell you they aren't weaned yet.
Goddamned pigs get treated better than I do. How much are you
willing to pay for one?"
The young man touched his sunglasses. "That depends on how much
you're asking."
"Thirty-five dollars," the man said, angrily clearing his throat.
The young man smiled and shook his head. "That's too much."
"What did you say your name was?"
"Sam Morrison, from Keewuttunnee."
The man spat on the ground. "Don't know the name."
"I'll give you $25," Sam said, withdrawing the money from his
wallet, holding it out in his fingers. "Cash money."
The man took the money and stuffed it in his pocket. "All right."
He closed the screen door and vaulted like a teenager off the
steps.
Sam followed him across the mud yard. They went in the door of a
half-fallen barn. It was so gloomy inside that Sam stopped,
unwilling to take another step. After a moment or two, his eyes
adjusted. There were knots and slats missing from the walls and the
sunlight leaked in, throwing a stippled pattern on the barn's dark
insides. The man was leaning against the door of a box stall,
looking down at the piglets. Sam joined him. "Which one do you
want?" the man said.
Six small pigs, no larger than four-legged watermelons, were nosing
around in the straw floor of the stall. The mother was passed out
on the floor, huge as a beached whale. The smell rising from the
stall was sickening. I should get my head examined, Sam thought.
"It doesn't matter, any one of them."
"A big one or a small one?"
"A medium one, I guess."
The man opened the door of the stall and slipped inside. The
piglets started to run around the stall and the sow bucked to her
feet. Once inside he pushed open another door that led outside and
the sow made one quick circle of the stall and then bolted out into
daylight, followed by six grunting youngsters. The man reached down
and grabbed a piglet as it whirred by, and scooped it into his
arms. The piglet immediately began to scream, in such a
bloodcurdling manner that anyone listening would have thought it
was being tortured with hot irons. The man carried it outside and
laid it on the tail-gate of Sam's pickup truck and Sam brought some
twine and the man tethered its feet. The woman was watching from
the door of the house. It looked like she was holding her hand over
her mouth but Sam didn't look twice. They spread some straw in the
bed of the truck and laid the pig down beside the spare tire. It
was no longer screeching but was choking and sobbing and rolling
its eyes in horror. Its back legs were covered with excrement.
Sam got in the truck. "Thanks," he said. "I better get it home."
He drove slowly on the way home. It was a gravel road and he
checked repeatedly over his shoulder to make sure the pig was all
right. After five miles or so he heard it retching and he stopped
the truck. It had gotten sick and there was yellow bile on the
straw and its eyes were clenched tight. Sam got a cloth and went
down into the ditch and soaked it in the frogwater, then wiped off
the piglet's face. "Try not to be such a pig," he said quietly.
Several miles farther up the road he slowed down for a construction
crew that was working on a culvert. He pulled to a stop on the
shoulder of the road and waved to a large fat man in a hard hat who
was wallowing around in the mud of the ditch. "Hey Norris, come
here. There's a lady here that wants to meet you."
The man gave Sam a sceptical look. He grunted and jiggled as he
climbed up the embankment and looked into the back of the truck.
"Holy Jeez," he said reverently. "It's a goddamn pig. Hey look, you
guys. Sam's got himself a goddamn pig."
The flagman came over. "Hey, nice...what is it, a girl or a boy?"
"You know, I never checked," said Sam, dismounting from the truck.
The flagman looked. "It's a boy. It looks a lot like Norris. Kinda
smells like him too."
"That's what I think I'll call him. Norris the Second."
The tubby man laughed, flattered.
Sam took the wet rag and wiped off the piglet's face. It opened one
eye and heaved a great self-pitying sigh.
"What are you going to do with him?" Norris asked.
Sam was patting the pig gently on the flank. "Throw a party and eat
him," he replied.

Sam owned an island about nine miles north of town. On the map it was
designated S-981, and until Sam shelled out fifteen-five in October
of last year it was owned by a widow in San Diego, California. The
island was located in a wild and uninhabited section of the river.
Sam was planning to build a house and live there year-round. He'd
wanted water-front property a bit closer to town but he'd given up
on that. All the serviced lots were sky-high and the crown was
sitting on everything else. When the island came up he realized
he'd be living the life of a hermit but hell, he could go on
looking forever too.
There were no buildings on the island and Sam intended to build a
log house the following winter. For now, he lived in a half-shot
old houseboat that he anchored in a U-shaped notch at the south end
of the island. The houseboat was temporary lodging, and was getting
near the end of its days. It had once belonged to a wealthy car
salesman from Winnipeg who had used it as a floating bordello
throughout the summer, and then in the seventies it was purchased
by the people at the Keewuttunnee Marina, who rented it out on
weekends to morons who drove it into every reef on the river
system, and then Sam bought it for $800, again on the spur of the
moment, when the proprietor told him he could pay any time and to
please get it away from his dock or he was going to dump a jerry
can of gas on it and go looking for a match. The superstructure was
made of scaly blue-painted plywood that was slowly delaminating and
the glass louvres in half the windows were missing or broken. The
floor heaved, the pontoons leaked, the outer deck was rotten, and
the only method for heating the place was closing the door.
However, Sam filled the living room with plants, carpets, driftwood
artifacts, seashells, Bob Dylan posters, bookshelves, animal
skulls, stereo-speakers, and barnwood furniture, and decided it
would have to suffice until he got his house built. As soon as the
ice went out in the spring he pushed it out to the island with his
twenty-horse and nudged it into that U-shaped bay. Then scrambled
up into the woods and tied it down to the big pines with half-inch
steel cable. Then threw down the gang plank. Then down went the old
snow tires into the water, to cushion what remained of his
flotation. The houseboat floated on a pair of steel pontoons,
thirty-two feet long. The pontoons were painted with black tar and
horribly rusted. Each pontoon was divided into eight compartments,
and so many of the compartments were punctured and waterlogged that
all he had to do was stroll down one side of the houseboat,
clinging to the narrow walkway, and the old tub would heel over and
almost dump him into the snags and lily pads, where dwelt leeches
and dock spiders the size of his hand. Home sweet home.
Sam wasn't weighed down with a great need for human company but he
liked the odd visit and conversation as much as the next guy. After
spending a few weeks hard at work clearing the site, burning brush,
dropping trees, he decided he'd invite all the townies out for a
little party. He was browsing through a northern cookbook that
night and he spotted a recipe for roast pig. A momentary image came
to him, of a stuffed porker turning on a spit above a bonfire, with
music, drinks, a big summer moon, barefoot girls and so on and so
on...there was no need to search further for a concept.
When he got home that day with Norris the piglet he cleared out a
space in the tool-room of the houseboat, laid down a bed of
newspapers and put the piggy inside with a bowl of grain and a
bucket of water. "Make yourself at home," he said. He closed the
door of the tool-room and went outside and got his tools together
to build a pigpen. The island was sixteen acres, about the size of
a large city block. From the water's edge it rose in a series of
granite ledges to a long humpback of open meadows and heavy mixed
forest. Sam went to a shady opening in the side of the forest and
began building the pen. Using two-by-sixes, ardox nails and a
quartet of standing spruce trees he built a square corral with the
approximate dimensions of a very small room. With two sheets of
plywood he fashioned a low roof. By mid-afternoon he was standing
there admiring his work. Not bad. He'd lived in worse places
himself. He went down to the houseboat to get Norris, who seemed to
be adjusting nicely, curled up and sleeping in a corner of the
tool-room. He hadn't even dirtied the floor. Sam carried him up to
the pen and Norris snuffled around in the straw. Welcome to your
new home, boy. You won't be needing a door.
The word soon got out that Sam was raising a pig on the island and
people began coming out to visit. At first, the boats would troll
slowly up to the houseboat, the people standing and waving
tentatively at Sam as courtesy demanded but, as these people
brought other people and the other people brought friends of their
own, some of the courteous behaviour began wearing away. Sam would
step out the front door of his houseboat and he would hear voices
up in the woods   more visitors. The police boat came by one day
and bubbled hesitantly a hundred yards off shore until Sam waved
them in. Chaput and Murphy tied the big inboard up to the tail of
the houseboat and came aboard. The two big guys coming up the
narrow walkway heeled the houseboat over and Sam had to yell a
warning and they almost got dumped into the water. They leaped from
the houseboat onto the shore and Sam led them up into the woods.
Norris, the local hero, peered up at them from the churned earth
upon which he lay. His ears hung over his eyes like a coy hairdo.
Murphy was, of course, an authority on swine management and he told
Sam how to custom-feed Norris for that extra poundage. They all
stood there silently for several minutes, watching. The smell of
the black earth and the small fly-bothered pig was not unpleasant.
Sam cleared the air by mentioning that they were both, of course,
invited to the barbecue. "Hey, all right," said Chaput. Murphy
asked who was going to dispatch Norris when slaughtering day came.
"I will," said Sam.
Murphy offered his services. He said he'd done it many times
before.
"Okay. If I change my mind I'll let you know."
"This is the spot," said Murphy. He drew his service revolver and
flipped Norris's earflap out of the way and stuck the gun muzzle
right into his ear. "Bang," he said. "Out go the lights."
Sam went into town for a bag of nails one day and when he came back
he saw a dirty old freighter canoe with an ancient Johnson six-
horse pulled up on the shore on the north side of the island, half
concealed by the shadows and undergrowth. He knew who owned the
boat and he didn't waste any time motoring around to the other
side. Smelly Mike and Johnny No Cash were standing beside the
pigpen when he got there. Smelly Mike was wearing a big hunting
knife on his belt and they both looked a bit guilty. "Thinking of
having a pork chop for lunch?" Sam asked, with a big smile. They
both laughed, as if this were the funniest thing they had ever
heard. Sam went about the business of watering Norris and changing
his straw, and when it became apparent that he wasn't in the mood
for inviting them to the barbecue they made their excuses and
headed for their canoe. Sam didn't trust either of them. Johnny No
Cash was a rat-faced and ponytailed little item who'd wandered in
off the highway one day with his guitar in a black plastic garbage
bag. Like a lot of people in Keewuttunnee he came from somewhere
else, somewhere else where he had a proper Christian name and a
Social Insurance number and so on, but here in Keewuttunnee he only
had his guitar which he strummed in a futile bid for spare change,
so everyone called him Johnny No Cash. Smelly Mike was a big man
with broken knuckles and a soft voice. He was a biker from Oshawa
who'd been here for two years, claiming that he'd be gone just as
soon as he got the bread together to get his motorcycle fixed. He
had a weedy blond beard and fat arms and wore those paratrooper
pants with pockets and zippers all over them. The little Indian
kids in town had been responsible for naming him. Whenever Mike
walked by they held their noses and whispered to each other. "That
guy's kinda smelly, or somethin'."
Sam got into the habit, afterward, of locking Norris into the tool-
room whenever he went to town for the afternoon.
Sam had had sloppier roommates than Norris. Without any prompting
whatsoever the piglet always desisted from fouling the floor of the
tool-room. When Sam got home and unpacked the groceries Norris
would explore the forbidden territory of the living room, or
scratch at the door and grunt if he had to go out. He would sit
obediently while Sam ate his supper, and if Sam offered him a
morsel he would first sniff at it with his pink nose and then take
it into his mouth as delicately as a cat. There was always a great
display of pleading and whining when Sam closed him into his pen
for the night, and Sam was beginning to wonder how much pork he was
going to be eating on the night of the barbecue. He decided to
include lots of cobbed corn and baked potatoes on the menu.
At first he'd planned to invite people on an individual basis, to
keep the thing from turning into a natural disaster, but a roast
pig party wasn't easy to keep quiet. It seemed that everyone he met
either wanted an invitation or already assumed they were coming.
Lemon the bartender was working on posters and Sam couldn't bring
himself to disapprove. Lemon had taken some art courses at the
university and he was Keewuttunnee's resident artiste. He was
developing a limited series of prints that would forever
commemorate the event. One of the posters depicted a bacchanalian
feast, with Norris impaled, dripping, on the spit and dozens of
half-clad revellers dancing around the fire. Another poster showed
a handcuffed Norris being smooched by officer John Murphy, whose
nose looked slightly more rounded and porcine than usual. Burt
Harrison had likewise appointed himself music chairman, and he was
planning to come out any day with his thousand-megaton stereo
system and wire the island for sound. Sam dreaded the prospect of
Burt rupturing their eardrums with his Iron Maiden and Ozzy
Osbourne tapes but no one else was probably willing to transport
their precious stereo equipment out to the island to be nailed to
trees and walked on.
Meanwhile Norris was enjoying increasing freedom. He was spending
a lot of time running free every day and Sam thought it would be
good for him. He could get away from the biting flies and
supplement his diet with the roots and truffles that grew wild in
the woods. Visitors always commented on his increased size and Sam
himself noticed, especially when he was lifting the pig in and out
of the pen. He wasn't getting much fatter but he was certainly
taller, with an adolescent's long legs and all the standard
identity problems. One day a group of dogs arrived with a boatload
of visitors and Norris reacted as if these were his long lost
brothers and sisters. The dogs tore back and forth on the island,
barking at squirrels, investigating rabbit holes, splashing in the
lake, and Norris did his best to keep up with them. He could run
almost as fast as they could through the woods but the moss-covered
rocks at the water's edge defeated him. The dogs would wade in up
to their chests, slap the water with their pink tongues, and then
shake off and dash back into the woods. Norris would still be
skidding and scrambling at the water's edge, falling on the greasy
rocks and squealing pitifully. For days afterward, when Sam patted
him on the flank he would wag his tail.
Sam was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to make a
rotisserie. His first option was to dig a barbecue pit, Hawaiian
style, and bury the body in hot coals overnight. Checking around
the island though, he couldn't find any suitable place with deep
enough soil to dig a pit. He talked to the alcoholic cook at the
hotel and learned that an above-ground barbecue pit, with Norris
turning regularly over the coals for twelve or fourteen hours,
would probably do the job. This still left the job of designing a
spit to turn him on. A dry wooden pole would probably sag under
Norris's weight, which was getting close to a hundred pounds by
now. Any kind of pole would have to be equipped with clamps of some
kind, so the carcass wouldn't slip as the pole turned.
Sam finally swallowed his pride and went to see Smelly Mike, and
asked him if he would weld up a set of clamps and a spit. Smelly
Mike, knowing that this meant he would be invited to the party, was
more than pleased to assume this important role. He and Sam went to
the dump   he really did smell bad that day   and cannibalized an
old Datsun, knocking off the drive shaft and radius rods and wheel
rims and tossing them in Sam's pickup. Back in Keewuttunnee, at
Steve's Esso, Murphy and Henry Yelle and Steve the Grouch and Sam
stood around watching as Smelly Mike put on his gear and fired up,
and arc welded all that butchered steel into a reasonable
approximation of a rotisserie stand, with the uprights standing in
the wheel rims and the drive shaft as a cross bar. Smelly Mike
triumphantly removed his hood and the others stood there muttering
in admiration as the steel cooled. Murphy, in uniform, planted his
ass on the crossbar and gave it his full weight. Steve the Grouch
said that if that didn't break the rig nothing would.
All that week volunteer workers showed up at the island, using his
tools, stringing lights up in the trees, cutting down logs for
bench seating around the fire and even cutting a small room-sized
area out of the forest that featured a Christmas-light entranceway
and a tin foil sign that said DANCE HALL. Burt Harrison came out
and started wiring up all the trees with sound equipment: hi-fi
speakers, car-door speakers, tweeters, woofers, Eatonia shelf
speakers salvaged from the dump; even a set of PA horns from the
community hall. He set up a little orange tent in the bush and
built the stereo inside, the chrome multi-dialled amplifiers and
boosters and spilled guts of cord. Sam patrolled the job site,
trying to ensure that any damage done to the local ecology was not
permanent. Norris went around making friends with all his
executioners. It was almost dark when they finally left.
The next day Sam went up to the terrace in the middle of the island
and worked on the site plan for his house. The preparations for the
pig roast were almost complete. Norris grazed in the undergrowth
while Sam drilled holes in the rock for his foundation footings.
The site was forty feet above the water and he could imagine he was
standing on his sun deck, gazing across the miles. Back in the bush
there he'd put his pumphouse and woodshed, and maybe a little barn
for his animals. On the slope here, there'd be a winding staircase
down to the water and the dock, the boat.
When he finished drilling the footings it was seven in the evening.
He went for a swim and fed Norris, then made himself a salami
sandwich and went and sat on the shoreline with his sandwich and a
Coke. Norris joined him. The execution was scheduled for tomorrow
morning at eight and the sky was suitably ominous. Norris didn't
seem concerned. Sam, with his blue-jeaned legs stretched out on the
moss-crusted granite, finished his meagre supper and scratched
Norris between the ears. Norris snuffled and wriggled his nostrils.
They watched dusk come to the lake. The water was slack and one
shade lighter than the storm-bruised sky. A loon was whooping
maniacally somewhere down the lake. If it rains, Sam thought to
himself, we might have to cancel the party. And if we cancel the
party, I doubt if we'll go to all the trouble of scheduling it for
another weekend. That's the only chance for a reprieve I think
you've got, boy. Until then I think we'll just keep you in your
pen.
Next morning dawned bright and clear. Sam didn't waste any time
lying in bed. He went up to the woods and found the wall of the pen
smashed down and Norris gone. Accustomed to having his freedom,
Norris had obviously taken exception to being penned up like an
animal. Sam fashioned a lasso at the end of a thirty-foot length of
yellow polypropylene and looped it, Roy Rogers style, over one arm.
He filled a pail with grain and tiptoed into the woods. "Norris?
Norrrr-is."
He spotted the pig almost immediately. Obviously unaware that this
was a life-and-death matter Norris didn't even flick an ear as Sam
slipped the noose over his head. As soon as the rope tightened on
his neck though, some ancient and infallible swine-alarm circuit
blew in his brain and he suddenly stiffened, loosed a wild squeal
and bolted, hitting the end of the slack rope at full speed and
burning a fast angry furrow in Sam's palm. Sam swore and dropped
the yellow rope bouncing after the pig. When the execution squad
arrived half an hour later   Murphy and Lemon in one boat and
Johnny No Cash and Smelly Mike in another   Sam was kneeling at the
water's edge, bathing his wounded hands in the water.
Lemon grounded the bow of his Starcraft and Murphy leaped out.
Murphy was wearing a sweatshirt with torn-off sleeves, and
sunglasses. The handle of a revolver protruded from the waistband
of his jeans. "Did you grease him yet?"
"Not yet."
"Do you want me to do it?"
"We'll have to catch him first."
Sam led them up to the pen and showed them how Norris had broken
the two-by-six planks as if they were made of balsa wood. "You
can't leave spaces or they'll bust out every time," Murphy said.
They organized into one-man scouting teams. Sam drew them a map of
the island in the dirt.
"He likes to stay in the woods during the heat of the day," Sam
explained. "He's got a long rope on him already. Once you spot him,
call out for reinforcements."
"I got my reinforcements right here," said Murphy, patting the
revolver.
"Yeah great, but don't start shooting holes in the spare ribs."
Sam directed Johnny No Cash and Smelly Mike to the swampy end of
the island. Murphy was to come in on a pincer movement from the
north end. "He knows me, so I'll take the middle," Sam concluded.
Lemon was already off in the bush somewhere, scouting.
Sam gave everybody ten minutes to get into position. He began
working his way stealthily into the woods. Soon he was in the gloom
of the early-morning forest and there wasn't a sign of life. The
ankle-deep moss sank underfoot and the ferns hung down. This is my
island, he thought to himself. I own it. I own all these trees. I
own Norris the pig. A frond of underbrush waved back and forth and
he spotted Norris's curly-tailed rump sneaking away. The rope was
no longer around his neck. He frowned. He called out, "It's an
island, Norris."
They combed the island for two hours and only spotted Norris twice.
The first time, when Sam spotted him. The second time, Murphy got
a shot. Murphy was, of course, a marksman of almost frightening
skill but on this occasion he muffed a running shot at twelve
paces. "Pretty small target," remarked Sam. Murphy and Smelly Mike
and Johnny No Cash and Lemon went into town to have breakfast,
swearing that they would return with reinforcements in several
hours.
"Don't worry, Sam," Smelly Mike said, giving Sam a consoling pat on
the shoulder, as if a tragedy had come to his family. "We'll hunt
him down."
Apparently after breakfast (more like lunch) they got temporarily
sidetracked into the bar and spent several hours slaving over a hot
pool table. It was late in the afternoon when they returned, with
a flotilla of drunken reinforcements, and Sam had already started
the fire up on the hill. Smelly Mike was wearing cutoffs and a
Harley Davidson shirt and was carrying a peeled spruce pole with a
hunting knife lashed to the end of it. The others were carrying a
motley assortment of weapons. Burt Harrison, stylish as usual,
looked like a besotted Mexican road agent. His hair was swept back
in a wild mane and he wore his shirt like a cape and he was
grinning and brandishing a gaff hook. "I wouldn't go to a lot of
trouble," said Sam. "It's too late to cook him now anyway."
"Hey man," Burt Harrison crooned. "It's never too late."
"It takes twelve hours, minimum, to roast a pig and it's almost six
o'clock now."
Smelly Mike checked the lashing on his spear. "Yeah, but this is a
question of honour."
"Right on," somebody replied.
Smelly Mike nodded. "A question of honour...RIGHT, BOYS?"
There was a cheer and a waving of knives.
"Suit yourself," Sam replied. "But I'm going to start cooking the
corn and potatoes."
"Oh man, look at these beers on ice."
"We'll have ONE drink," Smelly Mike decreed.
"He usually comes back for his grain at mid-day," Sam shrugged,
explaining the pig's absence to Sonny. "I haven't seen him since
first thing this morning."
Burt Harrison had stumbled his way into the stereo tent. There was
a horribly amplified scratch and sizzle from the trees and then the
first chord struck, loud as a crashed helicopter.
"ONE DRINK," Smelly Mike reiterated. Nobody was listening to him.
More boats were arriving. These ones, thank God, containing a
moderating element of females. Sam tipped his head slightly to
avoid the swung knife-tip of Smelly Mike's spear. He glanced at
Sonny. "So tell me...you read any good books lately?"

All night long there were torchlit forays into the bush to look for
Norris. Dim Harrison fell on his machete and the last thing Sam
knew was that they took him back to town, bleeding profusely from
the web of the hand. Johnny No Cash fell in the bonfire, for the
second time this summer, and he didn't seem to be burnt too bad
though it wasn't easy for Leslie, the Indian Affairs nurse, to give
a physical examination to a smoking, semi-conscious drunk by
flashlight. By two in the morning the beer supply was exhausted and
a lot of people were heading for home. The nicer people came by and
thanked Sam for the party and a lot of them admitted they were a
bit leery of the pig-roast idea anyway. The corn and the potatoes
were a better idea. Vegetables don't have first names. Smelly Mike
and a few others loitered around the fire until very late but Sam
gave up and went to bed. Finally, in the chill part of the morning,
when the first squirrels were ratcheting in the forest and the bass
were splashing around the houseboat Sam heard Smelly Mike coming
through the woods and climbing the gang plank of the houseboat.
Everybody had left without him. Smelly Mike had fallen asleep and
now he was mumbling, shivering and stumbling his way toward his
freighter canoe, which he'd left tethered to the back of Sam's
houseboat. Sam felt the houseboat tilt gently as Smelly Mike made
his way down the side. He heard the muffled exclamation of alarm as
the houseboat kept tipping, and heard the helpless clawing of
fingernails on plywood and the long instant of silence and then the
sudden, booming killer-whale splash. Sam smiled, how nice. He lay
in bed, faking sleep, while Mike clambered out of the water,
sputtering and screaming profanities.
When the drone of Smelly Mike's freighter canoe faded around the
corner Sam got out of bed and tiptoed outside. Up on the hill he
could see the littered beer cans and paper plates and ungreased
Datsun spit. That's my party, he thought. That's the last party
I'll be having for a while. He opened the door to the tool-room and
let Norris outside. The pig scooted down the gang plank and
urinated, with a great groan of relief, against a bush.
Sam shivered in the sharp morning air. "Go and clean up that mess,"
he said to the pig. "And don't say I never did anything for you."

DOWN THE ESCAPE HATCH
Nancy Bjorgo

1.  A Slow Boat to China

The most useful information I ever heard on radio was how to clean a
teapot. I knew you should not wash a teapot, but how to get it
clean? The person interviewed, a descendant or sales representative
(or both) of the Twinings tea people, said never wash a teapot;
instead put a tablespoon of baking soda in the pot, fill it with
boiling water and put on the lid. All the built-up brown stain will
bubble free and dissolve into the water.
Even before he finished speaking, I started boiling water and took
my shiny brown teapot   powdery brown inside   set it in the sink,
added the soda, and in due time poured out the most amazingly dark
sludge. I rinsed it out and looked inside   shiny as new. Two more
teapots, the little tan one and the gray one with the large black
oval on its side. Fantastic.
I drink copious amounts of tea, like Samuel Johnson when he worked
on his dictionary. Instead of a book I work on watercolours and
drink endless cups, hot or cold, just to finish the pot. Johnson
had a cluster of down-and-out people around him. Did they share the
tea, I wonder? What was the condition of their hair?
Recently, when my hair started falling out, I became interested in
doing a series of self-portraits. I had experimented rather
aimlessly with self-portraits for years: small round ones after the
example of Perugino, who must have looked in a small round mirror.
So I looked in a small round mirror with my head tipped back a bit
and my nose and mouth and teeth became exaggerated in size in the
drawings. They were going to be "Self Portraits after Perugino."
Then I experimented with frog drawings, drawing my eyes and mouth
very close together. They were to be the "Frog Portrait Series."
However, saleable drawings and paintings (flowers, birds, trees)
took precedence.
My doctor enquired about my diet and decided that I was losing my
hair because I was leeching all the minerals out of my body with
tea. Like the baking soda teapot. I pictured all the iron, zinc,
copper and magnesium pouring out of me as a dark sludge with little
sparkles in it. Imaginary, right? At any rate, I am back to doing
a series of self-portraits in a square mirror with my face very
close to the glass and just a few wisps of hair showing. I'll call
the series "The Bald Ego." I am spending too much time away from
other work that has to be ready for Christmas buyers.
On my way to the bank this morning to make a withdrawal, I watched
an October mosquito, wakened by the car heater, walk across the
inside of my windshield. The heater is nearly the only undamaged
part of my cranky but classic car. The car ahead of me had two
bumper stickers: "Peace or Perish" and "Escape to Wisconsin."
The tellers at the bank no longer tell me they love my hair. It
used to be a pale blonde wavy mass susceptible to air currents,
thick but light, buoyed up like an ocean cruiser or a battleship by
the stiffness of zinc and iron. Now they do not glance up at me as
they process my withdrawal, one of the last I can make if I am to
leave even a small balance.
I suffer a great deal of uncertainty about how long my wisps of
hair will last. This uncertainty would not be so affecting to men,
who accept the possibility of baldness. Women do not accept this.
I fluff my strands of hair and spray them into a ghost of their
former appearance. Or I flatten them to conform to my head like a
tight cap and wear large colourful earrings to draw attention away
from my scalp which shines through the strands unless I overbrush
them with a soft brush.
When I stop at my fortune teller's house on the way home, she reads
my teacup and asks if I have a teapot with a large black oval on it
and I say "Yes" and she says that I will go to China and I will see
the Egyptian pyramids.
Because I would prefer to start where I can always wear a hat, the
Himalayas, I think, would get me close enough to China to fulfil my
fortune. I will sell my car for the price of a horseback tour in
Tibet and rent out my house.
Perhaps there is an inaccessible valley, like Samuel Johnson's
Happy Valley in Rasselas, with mountains that bar falling bank
accounts, declining cars, and falling hair. The winds of the
Himalayas, I have read, will grow wild thick long hair not only on
yaks, horses and goats, but even on otherwise pink hairless pigs.
In this new part of the world, I probably will have to continue to
drink tea, but I will give six months to growing a new head of
hair. Johnson's Happy Valley was above the Nile. Look at a map. It
is not as far as you would think from Tibet to Egypt.

2.  In the Spring

I began to tell my cat things like: "You should take more
responsibility for your future," and "You need counselling. You
have no long-range goals."
She continued to blink and purr and stall.
I took endlessly long baths. I did three things at once: a cup of
tea, "The Young and the Restless," and a short story in a magazine.
Or a cup of tea, knitting the turquoise sweater, and the ten
o'clock news.
My teaching job was being blown off the bottom of the seniority
list by the closing of still another school. Declining enrolment.
Move or change professions. Or stall.
I dragged a small table into the bathroom for the TV and increased
to four things in an endless bath: "The Young and the Restless," a
whole pot of tea, a paperback novel held in the grates of the
hanging wire soap dish, and knitting: superwash wool that would not
shrink in the hot bathwater.
I went to the last placement meeting for surplus teachers and
talked to a math teacher and a science teacher who had signed
contracts on the same day five years ago and who now shared the
same situation: no job. What else they shared was the same bad
breath. I came home and ate yogurt to prevent tense-teacher breath.
But did it matter? The school year was over and so were my four
years of teaching.
'You can't go home again' is not necessarily true. You sometimes
can't get away from home. I was now on my third superwash sweater.
The first two were beautiful orange and bright teal but parts of
them were strangely stretched, with alternating coagulated areas.
My cat seemed unworried when I told her: "Look after yourself or
you'll become heedless of your appearance. You must exert yourself.
You need to buy cat food."
I began to clean the house but scheduled a bath/TV period every
day. Every household surface got my undivided attention: every
windowpane, sill, countertop, shelf, and mop board. I washed and
ironed all the curtains. The rag rugs washed up brightly. Linoleum
and varnished floors shone.
Last, I vacuumed the Oriental rugs inch by inch without any
attachment on the nozzle. Sometime during the two weeks of
cleaning, it occurred to me that I was getting ready to sell my
house. Nine hundred miles to the east, boards of education were
crying for teachers. Then I hit the patches in the rugs that seemed
to have inhaled tiny Siamese cat hairs. One patch was in the west
room where the sun hit the rug for the stretch of a good long nap
every sunny day: short silver hairs were laced into the grey and
maroon pile. Another patch was in the living room, off to one side
of the tile podium that holds a small green enamel wood stove. I
often lie on the rug with my cat, not worrying about the deposit of
hair that is peppered into the dark olive green pile. We are all
creatures of habitat.
On my way to the cleaners (with the living room drapes), I happened
to drive by the Canada Manpower office. Because I happened to have
on my new forest green suit and Evan Picone green heels, I parked
and walked back. Also a new bra. There is nothing to match the
upbracing feeling of a wide band of new Spandex around your sides
and across your back.
Inside the doors, a man in a new grey suit said, "Could I help you,
miss?"
"You probably can," I said.

3.  Moon Cats

I had tea with my neighbour because I was avoiding being at home that
morning. I sat across from her picture window, which faced the east
and the sun dogs that were rising out of a cloud. Sun dogs portend
a happening   as I remember, bad.
Blue merle collie hair, long, light, and wavy, hovered over my hot
tea. I picked one hair from my eyelashes where it had risen and
clung to this morning's mascara, perhaps not yet dry or perhaps re-
moistened by the steam of the tea.
The last of my cattery was barely surviving next door. My old cats
were dying of feline leukemia (born before the vaccine), and a
litter of tiny kittens was breathing its last, victims of
infectious peritonitis. Their little bodies were stretched flat,
tiny mouths open and dry but breathing. Who would want to look in
their kitten box ever again? "Keep them warm," the vet had said.
They rested on a flannel baby blanket folded over a heating pad
turned on low.
My neighbour Lydia, the owner of the blue merle collie, sat facing
me, her frizzy permed hair back-lit by the sun. The sun dogs were
a kind of broken halo behind her, not a circle   is that what makes
them bad? My neighbour's hair made a more complete halo. She fed me
lunch and more tea when I made no move to return across the crusty
snow to my house. The sun dogs brightened visibly, and then went
out just before the sun cleared the top of the window frame.
Odd, how we associate dogs with the sun and cats with the moon.
The day passed slowly. The actors on the soaps went through their
slow-motion suffering. At 4:55, I crossed the snowy lot between our
houses. By that time, the white moon had risen, opposite the sun
but higher. Perhaps the moon faces the sun across the sky in every
part of the world as we near the winter solstice. It's not
something I know.
No wildcats were out. Imported cats would have to substitute. Two
emaciated Siamese were wedged between the drapes and the picture
window glass, eyeing the moon to avoid my eyes because I had been
gone too long to suit them. The Siamese spirit does not die until
the last breath.
I went in at the back door. I closed the lid of the kitten box and
started down the basement stairway to another circle of fire   my
combo wood/oil furnace. I opened the door of the firebox where two
logs had lasted out the warm day. Shifting the kitten box to my
hip, I laid four pieces of dry birch across the logs. When the bark
began to crackle, I set the kitten box on top.
Too late I noticed the heating pad cord sticking out from a corner
of the box. Later that night I would retrieve the wires and coils
from the puffy moon-coloured ashes.

4.  Ragtime Baptism

"She dances with her cat," my mother had said derisively about an old
maid friend of hers. That was when I was in high school.
Time passes (as they say). It seems that all of a sudden I had
married, raised two children, and danced with several generations
of cats. While dancing to "Fidgety Feet" with the two-year-old
Siamese Martha I realized, on half a bottle of Fontana di Papa,
that my calling in life had (as they do not say) tornadoed past me.
Torpedoed past me. Had passed me. My husband bought reading glasses
for me so that I wouldn't have to tilt my head back to play the
piano through bifocals.
Every day, I rushed through dishes, laundry, and scrubbing. And for
two years, two years, I practised rags.
My next-door neighbour, having raised her children too, got a job
as a bank teller. She stood at her place all day in her sprayed
hair and high heels. When she saw me (not often) she started the
short conversation with "What do you do all day?"
I always said, "Days are lonesome/nights are long," like Bessie
Smith singing "Lost Your Head Blues."
My sister-in-law went back to teaching after being at home with my
nephew. First she suffered through power interviews in a room
banked with six men (principal, vice principals, heads of
departments).
I practised, pretending an audience existed over the top of the
studio piano in the back of our house. I wept (after sweeping the
audience away) over "Heliotrope Bouquet," the sweetest rag in the
world, even when not accompanied by a bottle of Fontana. Most of
the time, I pictured a manhattan, martini or champagne glass on top
of the piano. Most of the time, one was there. I had to buy martini
glasses because nothing looks like one except one. Ice-cold gin is
sweet off the lip of a sloping glass.
I didn't have my own style. I played "Maple Leaf Rag" like Bolcom,
rolling with dynamics, with ritardandos, with sostenutos. Then I
did it like the recording from a piano roll played by Joplin
himself, as written, but with patterns of wooden embellishments
like a player piano in a tempo you could jump rope to. I did
"Kitten on the Keys" like Claude Bolling with Bolling precision. I
did some cool Chico Marx octaves with an index finger gun.
What does practising in isolation like this in Northern Ontario do
to you? I drove with my youngest son for seven hours to see a
heliotrope in bloom in the greenhouse at the Walker in Minneapolis.
The flowers bloomed by the hundreds on the one large potted plant.
They were small. They were sweet.
"Heliotrope is commonly called 'cherry pie,' referring to its sweet
and fruity fragrance," said the photocopy handout I took from a
wire basket beside the large plant.
I sought a fountain. The only one was flowing over a large Pop Art
sculpture cherry and spoon and was inaccessible to wetting one's
head. Pop's fountain. You do not have to believe that as my son and
I left the greenhouse a shower, seemingly released by the sun,
temporarily wet the surroundings and us. The rhythm of the drops on
the greenhouse glass had alerted us to run outside in time: sixteen
bars of sixteenth notes and it was over.
It has not all been hard. Feeling guilty about practising for two
years, I became a short-order cook long enough to get the Denver
sandwich at a cut-rate restaurant changed to the Chicago sandwich.
I chopped the onion, peppers, and celery in slow cut time.
There was also a rest from housework when I had tennis elbow from
sanding the rust spots on the family car. I looked like Napoleon
with my hand hanging in the button front of my clothes. I practised
even though my elbow ached. I still have a tendency (tendoncy?) to
spell piano "paino." Napoleon had some breakthroughs; after that
came mine.
I've decided that my style is muffled. I'm not joking. Not dynamic
like Bolcom, not fidgety like Gillis, not heavy-sexy like Waller;
not even as written by Joplin, but muffled. Sweetly muffled,
rambling, searching for melody and soul. "Heliotrope Bouquet"
lives. I play Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost" and "The Maple Leaf" like
they are flowers, too. "Kitten on the Keys" in my hands is a
snowball flower, not a cat with the crazies like Siamese Martha.
I've started writing a three-theme rag with the middle based on the
greenhouse sixteenth notes. I had thought that the shower was a
beginning but really it was a middle. The beginning was the
bifocals which I cast off to see monofocally. I'm not facing power
interviews like my sister-in-law but something like them: auditions
with whoever will listen and an ad in the paper.
"Oh, mama, mama, mama/mama, look at Sis," as the Frank Gillis
version of "Winin' Boy" goes. I'm starting to sing. I can do a
sustained version of "St. Louis Blues" like Bessie Smith, with a
more nasal white quality like Hoagy Carmichael.
"Oh, play that thing!"
Mama, Papa, those piano lessons with Mrs. Chord (I'm not joking)
were not in vain (or pain):

WANTED: Steady job in bar as
piano player   exclusively rags.
Part-time work also wanted for
parties, etc. Rags are the
soul of music. Call 555-555-RAGS.

If I get any long-distance calls, "I'll pack my grip/and make my
getaway."

LARRY FORTENSKY
Dorothy Colby

I began buying 6-49 tickets the day I saw Elizabeth Taylor's wedding
picture on the cover of People magazine. She looked youthful and
pure and tanned in a yellow lace dress Valentino had designed and
given to her. The bodice exposed her shoulders, the swell of her
breasts, the cleft between them. I studied the picture and imagined
Larry running his finger along the boundary between skin and
fabric, from shoulder to shoulder. I think her breasts would rise
and fall and try to escape.
Larry Fortensky doesn't look like a man who would wear a hard hat.
His dark blond hair is full, tousled and sprayed. If he hadn't
married Liz, Jos‚ Eber wouldn't have styled his hair or been his
best man. Eber always wears a cowboy hat; he must be bald. I don't
think he would share confidences with Larry. Maybe Larry shoots
baskets in the driveway while Jos‚ and Liz gossip.
I know Liz was the star of her wedding: she is centred in all the
pictures, surrounded by her friends and her family. Larry stands
beside or behind her. He doesn't look out of place in his white
dinner jacket, shirt and black trousers. Liz probably sat on a
chaise lounge fingering fabrics, studying designs, before she
selected his wedding clothes. Elizabeth dressed him well.
Wealth is Elizabeth's fairy godmother. Winning a lottery could be
mine. Without money she could never have married this construction
worker, twenty years younger, at a ranch called Neverland. At
fifty-nine Liz bought her fantasy and I want what she has. A young
man. A muscular man. Not the bridegroom Larry, the construction
worker Larry. Once I saw a picture of him leaving her estate
carrying his lunch in a small cooler, his T-shirt and jeans molded
to his body. I know what's under those construction clothes   I am
an artist; I've studied life drawing at Lakehead University.

Six years ago, the week before our twenty-sixth anniversary, I asked
my husband Marv for a divorce. I was forty-six. What I remember
most about that moment is that his eyes looked distorted behind his
aviator glasses. Maybe the invisible bifocal line warped his
appearance. Maybe he looked different because I hadn't looked into
his eyes for a long time.
I didn't ask for a divorce because we disagreed about our children.
Being parents to three sons was the good part of our marriage. I
didn't ask because his hair had thinned or his stomach bulged or
his ass had gone flat. I didn't ask because I felt deprived. We had
a two-storey house and I drove a Sprint. We both liked movies, the
symphony and shrimp.
When he asked why, I couldn't tell him I would suffocate if I had
to endure another twenty-six years of default. That is how I had
come to think of our marriage. Twenty-six years of default. Like a
computer that automatically defaults to one-inch margins and single
space. From our wedding day, our life had automatically defaulted
to monotony and predictable sex.
As I remember it, even our courtship was by default. Everyone in
our group had paired, and Marv and I were the stand-alones, like
the kids on the playground who are always chosen last.
If you look like Liz you're captain, you choose. But I didn't look
like Liz. When I wore a bathing suit or a sweater my mother would
say, "In time you'll blossom." She meant that I'd develop breasts,
and breasts meant popularity. Eventually I began to believe her:
when I blossomed, I would have my choice of boys. But I never
blossomed. I grew up, not out. All the flat-chested members of my
family are six feet tall: my dad, my two brothers and I.
If you look like Liz you get to choose again if your first choice
isn't a winner. It wasn't that Marv and I didn't win. Liz didn't
win or she wouldn't have married eight times. But I know there were
times she cheered. If only there had been times when I could have
cheered.
When I look at pictures of her with Mike Todd or Eddie Fisher I can
see they adored her. If Marv had adored me, even a little, I would
have cheered. He said he loved me. Maybe he did. I said I loved him
and I didn't. Even our wedding pictures show no hints of intimacy
or sparks of passion. We are posed, predictable.
Elizabeth's life with Mike Todd was adventure and passion. Once, in
his plane flying from France to Yugoslavia, he asked if she wanted
an Italian lunch in Venice, or French in Nice. Marv's idea of
Italian was Domino's pizza. Mike even threw a bash for her at
Madison Square Garden. Liz entered riding an elephant, wearing a
white gown and diamond tiara. Marv never forgot birthdays or
anniversaries, but he remembered them with blenders, vacuums and
winter coats.
And Liz had Richard Burton   that voice, those eyes. They met while
filming Cleopatra. She probably fell in love with him watching his
tunic ruffle and brush his thighs. I can't imagine Marv in a tunic
any more than he could picture me on the Nile.
I wonder who planned Elizabeth's weddings. Mother planned mine. She
probably began the day I was born. She was thrilled I would be a
bride. She was thrilled I would be married before I was twenty-one.
She thought unmarried twenty-two-year-olds were rejects.
"You should have a train. I had one," Mother said.
"That's your generation."
"You can wear my tiara."
"I'm too tall."
"We'll freshen it with a new white veil. You can still wear white,
can't you?"
Of course I could wear white. If virginal was red I could have worn
red. "We can't go too far," Marv would whisper as he massaged my
back. Sometimes his hand would creep under my sweater. I felt as if
I were watching a movie   I'd wonder what would happen next.
Nothing ever did.
Maybe that was our problem, we never lost control. Maybe he
considered the front seat of his dad's Buick sacrosanct. But I
never understood what restrained him later in the king-size bed his
mother bought us.
Sandy, my matron of honour, held the girls-only shower for me at
her apartment on a night her husband played basketball. She had
been the first in our group to marry. She was tiny, and her cheeks,
breasts, and bottom were firm and round   my mother called her
compact. Her shoulder-length hair curved under naturally. Her hair
was like her   it responded naturally and natural responses suited
Sandy. She was the most popular girl in our class. Hank gave her a
diamond for high school graduation, and they were married that
fall. Hank was afraid she'd marry someone else if he waited too
long.
It was Sandy who began the tradition of excluding mothers and
mothers-in-law, aunts and older sisters, from the kitchen shower.
Three or four of us were in Kresge's, our arms laden with spatulas
and tea towels, measuring cups and spoons, when we passed the
nightgowns. "Let's buy Sandy baby dolls," someone said.
"Not sexy."
But we shrieked "YES!" when one girl held up transparent black
nylon trimmed with red ruffles.
When Sandy opened the box, she slowly raised the nightgown by its
spaghetti straps. She stood up, holding it in front of her, and
swayed from side to side. The black nylon shimmied.
"You're not going to wear it," I said.
"Not for long," she laughed.
After that, although we continued to give kitchen utensils and
slinky nightgowns, we became more daring. One bride received only
the bottom to men's pajamas with the tie cord missing. Another was
given a bra with gold tassels. We decorated crotches of panties
with sequins and doused them in cheap perfume.
At my own girls-only shower, I didn't know what to expect. Sandy
seated me in the centre of her living room and set a large carton
in front of me. The girls circled round, on the couch and on
kitchen chairs, their expressions masked.
"Go!" Sandy said.
I picked the top gift out of the carton and tore off the yellow
tissue. In a super-absorbent Kotex box, shrouded in plain brown
paper, I found a bottle of white vinegar.
"Equal portions. Makes you pucker," Sandy said and we laughed. All
brides received a bottle of vinegar after a doctor had advised
Tanya to douche with equal portions of water and vinegar. And
someone always said, "Equal portions. Makes you pucker." I smiled
at my friends because they were smiling at me.
Next came the obligatory black lace panties. And there was the
battered copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, given first to Sandy, and
then passed from bride to bride.
Finally there remained one box in the bottom of the carton, a blue
Birks gift box with an enormous silver bow. I glanced around before
I picked it up. The girls' faces were masked again.
Laugh, I told myself as I slipped off the ribbon. Be sure to laugh.
I lifted the lid. An embossed gold seal caught the edges of the
white tissue. I broke it. Nestled in the pure white paper was a
pair of men's jockey shorts with a bulging crotch.
"Wow!" I forced a smile and lifted the shorts from the box. A
banana sheathed in a blue balloon fell into my lap.
I laughed. Someone grabbed it and held it up. "Oh, Marv, oh, Marv!"
The girls screeched and tossed it back and forth across the room.
"A blue Marvin."
"Tell us, Maggie, is he blue?"
I didn't answer because Sandy now held the banana between her
breasts and began to rub it slowly up and down. Her hair brushed
her chin as she swayed from side to side. "Last night," she said,
"last night I conceived. If I didn't, I should have. That little
sperm swam and swam. I know...I know I grabbed it and I didn't let
go."
She hugged her arms, dropped her head back and whispered, "Glory,
alleluia! That's what I said." She repeated the words softly as she
continued to sway. "Glory, alleluia." It became an invocation.
What I remember is the silence. The married girls, the engaged
girls, the unattached girls   all of us were silent. Sandy wasn't
teasing now, she was sharing. She knew something. She knew
something I wanted to know, something we all wanted to know.
When we were growing up, I think I sensed that Sandy was different
from me. That she possessed some inner knowledge. That she was born
knowing. The Christmas we both received figure skates she mastered
figure eights long before I did. My loops were never symmetrical.
One was always smaller than the other. "Put your mind in your
skates," Sandy said as she carved two matching circles. I tried,
but I didn't know how.
Marv and I spent our wedding night at The Palmer House in Duluth.
I didn't invoke 'Glory, alleluia!' that night or any night during
our marriage.

Our twenty-six years slipped by. Marv had graduated in accounting from
U. of T., and the year we married he returned to Thunder Bay to
work in the family insurance business. I had majored in fine arts
but I don't think I ever expected to earn a degree and teach. After
our wedding Marv's dad asked if I would like to work in his office,
but I kept my summer job as a day care assistant. l liked it. In
the next five years I had three boys: my own day care.
We bought a home in Grandview. Then a boat that we docked at Marv's
parents' camp on Lake Superior. The boys joined Cubs and Little
League, and played hockey. I was a den mother and baked for school
fund-raisers. Marv curled, golfed and took the boys fishing.  We
alternated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day between his family and
mine, and celebrated New Year's Eve with Sandy and Hank and our
friends. I remember we both loved the boys and they loved us and
there were times we laughed.
Winter, spring, summer, fall   the seasons revolved. But it seemed
I was cold more than I was warm. The January before our twenty-
fifth anniversary, the snow banks grew so high there was no place
for the boys to throw the snow. We contracted to have the banks cut
down and hauled away. Our Eaton's bill that month included a travel
brochure: Acapulco, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, Ixtapa and
Zihuatanejo. White beaches, blue swimming pools, rolling surf.
Women in bikinis and men lusting after them. Couples   holding
hands, sipping on straws from a shared glass, dancing in the
moonlight under palm trees.
"Let's go to Mexico," I said.
"What do you know about Mexico?" Marv asked.
"I want to go to Puerto Vallarta."
"What do you know about Puerto Vallarta?"
"I want to go someplace warm."
I didn't tell Marv there were only two names I recognized in the
brochure. Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. Our neighbor, Otto
Schuster, had retired early and he and Erica traveled south each
winter. He told me, "I won't go back to Acapulco. Every time I left
the hotel, beggars followed me. On the beach someone was always
hawking T-shirts or blankets."
One day he insisted I come into his house to see their vacation
pictures. "I'll wait here," I said and stood just inside the door.
"I don't want to take off my shoes."
He showed me photos of himself, none of Erica: Otto stretched out
in a lounge chair wearing a flesh-coloured bikini; Otto facing a
rolling surf with a white handkerchief tied around his head; Otto
with his arm around a young Mexican woman dressed for a fiesta. His
body was brown, slim and puckered.
I didn't tell Marv that I knew Richard Burton had made Night of the
Iguana in Puerto Vallarta, and that he and Liz lived there together
before they were married.
I told the travel agent, "I don't want a high rise. I don't want to
take an elevator to the beach. I want a balcony, the scent of the
tropics and the sound of the surf." I didn't say earthquakes
worried me.
As we leafed through brochures, she asked me if I played tennis.
"No," I said. A bronzed man and woman leaned against a balcony rail
holding racquets.
"Do you want to dance?" She kept turning pages.
"I don't know." There were swimming pools, outdoor restaurants and
nightclubs.
"Playa de Oro. Means 'beach of gold,'" she said, handing me the
brochure. "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor stayed here before
they bought their home. The cruise ships dock nearby. You might see
the Love Boat."
"I like the name. Beach of gold." I took the brochure. Marv had no
choice. We were going.
We decided to escape for two weeks at the end of February. The day
after I made the down payment, Marv had surgery for a strangulated
hernia.
"Go to Mexico, Marv," Dr. Hart said. "Make it a real vacation.
Stroll the beach. Sip margaritas. No lifting or strenuous
activities for six weeks." Marv bought one gigantic suitcase with
wheels so I wouldn't have to wrestle with our old ones.
Sandy and I sipped margaritas at the Valhalla the day before we
left. She ran her finger around the rim of the goblet and licked
off the salt. "I'm happy for you, Maggie. You're going to be warm.
Do you think I'll ever be warm again?"

When the tropical air hit me I couldn't move. I stood in the doorway of
the plane, mesmerized. The heat actually shimmered above the
tarmac. And the palm trees looked exactly like the ones in the
movies.
A minivan took us into town from the airport and stopped in front
of a white-washed building. "Playa de Oro," the driver said, and
slung our bags onto the steps. I had expected a curved driveway
lined with palm trees and a kaleidoscope of flowers. Not two steps
up from sidewalk to entrance.
There were no windows or doors in the two-storey lobby. Birds
fluttered in the rafters. The receptionist took our voucher and
gave our key to a young dark-eyed man dressed in sparkling white.
He grabbed our bags and said, "Follow me."
We did. Up a flight of stairs and through a short dark hall. Why
would Elizabeth stay here? I wondered. Then we stepped into the
sunlight. When my eyes adjusted, I discovered I had been
transported to the courtyard of the travel brochure. Emerald grass,
palm trees, fuchsia, yellow and red flowering shrubs. Bronzed
bathers in bikinis lounged around a sapphire pool. I couldn't see
the playa de oro but I knew it was there.
"I'll meet you in the room," I said to Marv and ran down the steps
and through the courtyard. There it was: sand and sea. I pulled off
my runners and socks, tugged up my slacks and waded in. Before I
could react, a large wave slapped my thighs and soaked my slacks.
I ran across the sand to our room.
My swim suit became my uniform; the ocean, my soother. It was my
roller coaster when I bodysurfed, my cradle when I floated beyond
the breakers, my margarita when I licked salt from my lips. My skin
turned from white to almond to toast to bronze. The vendors no
longer said, "Cheap today, lady. Almost free." I felt as if I
belonged.
While I sipped my morning coffee beside a thatched-umbrella table
and watched the fishing boats leave, Marv slept. While I strolled
the beach searching for shells, Marv slept. He joined me for
brunch, then adjourned to the beach bar to sip cerveza. The other
guests called him Canada, the only nickname he has ever had. When
the beer made him drowsy, he retired to a beach chair until it was
time to go into town for supper. When we returned, he came alive.
While I slept, he danced and shot the bull with the other guests in
the thatched-roof bar until it closed at two. Once I went with him
but The Mayor of Margaritaville, a huge solid man with a salt-and-
pepper beard who presided there, irritated me. An American, he had
made himself an institution at the hotel. He wore a white bush
shirt and pants, and crooned to canned music and bragged about his
musical career in L.A. He intimated that he and John Huston were
confidants. I hadn't come to Mexico to listen to an American brag.
John was an American expatriate I liked. He had come to P.V. in the
early sixties and had married a Mexican. He gave vouchers for free
brunch to guests who agreed to visit the condos the hotel was
trying to sell.
"Did you ever see Liz and Richard?" I asked him one morning.
"Hell, yes. They stayed here before it was a hotel. Only cottages
back then. No hotels out this far."
He told me Richard and Susan, his last wife, had had a bungalow in
his neighbourhood. "I'd see him walking his dog," he said. "He wore
a baseball cap."
"Did you ever see Elizabeth?"
"He bought her a house in the city. That part of the hill was still
jungle. Liz didn't go out. She summoned people. Burton drank with
the locals every afternoon at a bar on the Malecon."
"Which bar?"
"Oh, it's a parking lot now."
"I'd like to have a drink where Richard did."
"He and Susan used to eat at the Casablanca. That's still there."
Marv and I were going to the Casablanca.
"For five bucks you can tour the house Burton bought for Liz. It's
a bed and breakfast now."
I ran up to our room. Before I had closed the door I was telling
Marv about the bed and breakfast. I pulled back the drapes and
flung open the door to the balcony. A parrot screeched. Our room
smelled stale.
Marv groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. "I don't give a
damn about seeing some movie star's house."
Late that afternoon we went into town. Puerto Vallarta had been a
fishing village when Richard and Liz first arrived. Now the city
scaled the hills and pushed back the jungle. The only trees were
those that decorated courtyards or guarded the rim of the
surrounding mountains. Our taxi left the ocean front, climbed and
wound between houses abutting the narrow cobblestone streets, and
stopped in front of a stone and white-washed stucco house.
"This is it?" Marv asked. I could see a portrait of a young
Elizabeth displayed behind an elaborate wrought-iron gate.
A small tile beside the entrance identified the house. Casa
Kimberly. I pulled a cord and a bell rang inside. A woman leaned
over the second floor balcony. "Yes?"
"We'd like a tour."
She disappeared and reappeared on the steps. I paid ten dollars and
we followed her to the first level. There was a ping-pong and pool
table. "Richard liked pool," our guide said.
"And I thought he liked Shakespeare and tits," Marv muttered.
The house was built into the hill. The walls were whitewashed and
the floors tile, and archways divided the rooms. From the
balconies, on every level, I could see the ocean or the brick-
coloured tiles of the roofs below. This was a Mexican home: massive
furniture, some of it leather, some wood; glass and white wrought-
iron tables; Mexican figurines   cats, frogs and bulls   in shades
of blue. And everywhere, photographs: Liz and Dick at Mismaloya
Beach, Liz and Dick as Anthony and Cleopatra, Liz with Montgomery
Clift, Richard on the cover of Life, Liz in a black gown, a red
gown, and so on.
Dominating the living room was a mattress covered in denim. "When
Richard was too drunk to climb the stairs to Elizabeth's room, he
slept here," the proprietor said.
I imagined him sprawled on the bed, dark hair tousled, one leg on
the bed, the other off it. His snore would be a gentle purr.
"Richard found this house too crowded." Our guide moved to the
balcony. "He built a house for himself over there." An arched pink
bridge connected the balcony to the house across the street.
I could imagine Liz's crowded dining room table: her sons and
daughters, her staff. Perhaps a child in a high chair banging a
spoon, calling "Mommy! Mommy!" She would look across the street and
see him swimming in the pool or sleeping in the sun, or hear him
laughing with his friends. She would want to be with him.
"Some call this The Lover's Bridge; others, The Bridge of
Reconciliation," our guide said. "Their battles were legendary."
She swung open a wrought iron gate that could be locked from
Elizabeth's side and we followed her across the bridge to
Richard's. The interior was white stucco and brick, and green tile,
a reminder of Wales. Again there were photographs on the walls and
tables, and propped on couches.
"I found a letter he had started typing to Elizabeth's daughter,"
the woman told us. "He said that he and Elizabeth were through. I
thought about sending it to her." I didn't like our guide.

Our table at the Casablanca faced the ocean. Waves raced across the
beach and the palm fronds swayed to the right. I imagined Richard
meandering, perhaps stumbling, as he climbed the cobblestone
streets, past the open doors of shops and houses. "Hola," he would
say to people he met, or "Buenas noches."
He would open the gate to Elizabeth's house, and as he climbed the
stairs to lie beside her he would call, "Maggie...my darling...."
When we returned to our hotel, The Mayor of Margaritaville was
crooning, "I left my heart in San Francisco."
"Hey! Canada!" someone called from the bar.
"Are you coming?" Marv asked.
"I'm tired."
     That night I sat on our balcony and wished that I could hear the
ocean. But the Mayor's singing filled the night. Finally the music
stopped and the lights in the bar dimmed. I heard the surf.
When Marv came in, I went to bed. I rolled toward him and he
turned. For the first time in that king-size bed our bodies
touched. When he kissed me he tasted of stale beer and cigars.

Marv told everyone that he wanted to visit Mexico again. Five years
later he did. Sandy went with him. She was always able to choose
and this time she chose Marv. I didn't mind. I just didn't
understand why.
When Marv and I split, he kept the house and I kept the Sprint. He
helps me make payments on a small town house near the university.
My easel is a permanent fixture in the dining room. Weekends I
clerk at the Cow Palace.
One evening, about a year after Marv and I separated, my former
neighbor, Otto, appeared. "I thought I'd check out where you live."
He smiled and handed me a bottle of wine.
He settled into my chair. "Are we going to share the wine?" he
asked. I poured him a glass and perched on a straight-back chair.
"We went to Cuba this year," he began...
Five minutes later he beckoned to me with his empty glass.
"Next year, I think we'll go to Jamaica. They have nude beaches."
He looked fit with his clothes on, but I knew his body would be
weathered and wrinkled. He stood up. "May I see the rest of your
house?"
I was a woman born not knowing. "Erica is my friend," I blurted,
which wasn't true. She had merely been my neighbour.
Hidden in my bedroom closet is a portrait of the young model,
David, that I painted in life drawing class. I call it "Maggie's
David." I think he was a body builder. He looked Mediterranean.
Sometimes I take the painting from the back of the closet and prop
it on a chair. I mix a pitcher of margaritas and, while I sip my
drink, I study my David and concentrate on my 6-49 numbers.

If Wishes Were Horses
Marianne Jones

Linda believed that in life, as in fairytales, the deserving are
rewarded. She believed in Walt Disney movies. She believed that if
she sent in enough boxtops she would win the ten thousand dollar
grand prize.
Maybe that's why she told the stories she did. She wanted so badly
for them to be true that she believed they were.
Like the time she told everyone in fourth grade that her parents
had given her a foal for her tenth birthday. Fat chance. None of us
at Oliver Road School were from what you'd call the horsey set, but
Linda's family least of all. The Crumps lived in a shabby, grey
stucco house with their six skinny kids in hand-me-downs. The
closest Linda ever got to a horse was reading King of the Wind in
the school library.
But there she stood, facing down a circle of snickering kids with
stubborn sincerity written all over her pale, freckled face.
"It's true. It's a beautiful, pure-black foal with a star on its
forehead. I'm going to call him Midnight."
"Well, where is he, then?"
"He has to stay at the farm until he's old enough to leave his
mother."
"Why can't we go see him?"
"He's very, very shy. He's afraid of everyone. He'll take a little
sugar from my hand, but he runs away if anyone else is there."
The circle collapsed in hoots of laughter. Linda was a popular
target, with her hungry-waif looks and her obvious desire to be
accepted. Maybe she couldn't help being at the bottom of the heap,
but it bugged me that she was always handing them fresh ammunition.
For weeks afterward it was "Hey, Ugly, how's the horse?" and "Got
any pet ponies in your basement for me, Crump?"
She endured it stonily. Only once did she say, as we walked home
from school together, "I hate them."
I tried to cheer her up, telling her they weren't worth her
attention. Inside, I was thinking What did you expect?
She was forever making up these absurd stories, like the one about
the rich grandmother who wanted Linda to come live with her, or how
her name was really Linnette, when we all knew it was plain Linda.
I guess when you come from a family like the Crumps, who sold bait
in the driveway and had Playboy calendars hanging in the bathroom,
it's understandable that you'd rather be a Linnette with a rich
grandmother.
I've often asked myself how Linda and I got to be friends    and
why we stayed friends as long as we did. She was such a clinger,
jealous of anyone else I played with, insisting that she spend
every waking moment with me. When I was exasperated, I would tell
myself that the only reason I let her hang around was pity.
But the truth was, I secretly admired her defiant optimism. I was
an aging child, inhaling cynicism at home with my dad's cigarette
smoke. Maybe I, too, wanted to believe in hope and happy endings,
that life was full of possibility, that some things could remain
fresh and undefiled. But it didn't go with the facts.
My earliest vivid memory is of my father gripping my mother's blue
chiffon party dress in one hand and in the other, the butcher knife
from the kitchen. He was yelling, but I don't remember his words.
My eyes were following the knife as it slid through the yards of
thin material, carving it into bright blue streamers.
After he left, my mother lay across the bed, crying like a child.
I stood there stupidly, not moving, wanting to hug her, to tell her
not to cry. But I did nothing.
When I was eleven, I told Linda my dad was an alcoholic. I was
trembling with the importance of my revelation. She wasn't
impressed.
"That's nothing!" she snorted. "My dad drinks and chases women."
"He does not!" I was annoyed at being one-upped, and suspected her
of making it up, like her other stories, although it was the first
time she had said anything negative about her life.
"It's true!" she insisted. "When I'm in bed at night I hear them
fighting about it."
I wanted to disbelieve her, but then I remembered the picture of
the naked model grinning cheekily at everyone who used their
bathroom.

Linda wanted to be an actress. On the stage she and her stories could
command respect. I was more prosaic, I was going to teach. I found
the ordered world of the classroom safe, not subject to mood swings
and binges. I enjoyed circling correct answers, memorizing
formulas. If you followed the rules, you could control the outcome.
Unlike most girls our age, neither of us planned for marriage and
children. Linda had done enough time babysitting her younger
brothers to resist the false glamour of motherhood. And I dreamed
of being old enough to escape my parents' prison. I admired my
mother's grace under pressure, but not enough to want a similar
fate for myself.
My mother often told me about my dad's childhood, about how he was
unwanted and abused by his parents. She wanted me to understand,
not be bitter. I was filled with longing to fix things for him, but
felt the same paralysed uselessness I had felt watching my mother
sob amid the ruins of her chiffon dress.
I get that same feeling still when I see suffering, either in
individuals or on a grand scale. The news on TV or those earnest
documentaries about human despair in its multitude of forms fill me
with helpless guilt. I am expected to do someting to fix it.
Otherwise why would those nice concerned journalists be bringint it
to my attention? I think sometimes that we can't save anyone, that
the best we can do is survive.

As I got older, I began to chafe more in my friendship with Linda. We
still had good times   days when my parents invited her to camp
with us, or we went to the fair or a movie together. But I resented
her possessiveness and jealousy. I wanted other friends, which she
wouldn't allow. I don't know why I put up with it. I was disgusted
by my weakness and cowardice. But I couldn't forget the Valentine's
Day in grade four when mine was the only card she got, or how the
boys had named her "Ugly," or how the girls treated her with catty
disdain.
Still, when she wrote on my thirteenth birthday card, "To Christine
Taylor, my very best friend in the whole world. Yours forever,
Linda," I was not so much touched as uncomfortable. I longed,
guiltily, for time away from her suffocating need. I began making
up stories about family obligations so that I could have time to
myself, to hide at home and read, or bike to the park.
In spring, during my first year of high school, I came home one day
to see our lawn dotted with my mother's belongings: the leather
gloves Dad had given her for Christmas; an embroidered
handkerchief; nylon scarves in a collage of colours   red,
turquoise, yellow, gold. Years of controlling my reactions to
bizarre situations enabled me to walk casually, without a sideways
glance, to the front door, as if I hadn't noticed anything out of
the ordinary.
My mother was watching for me. She motioned me inside and handed me
an Eaton's bag. "Your father emptied my top drawer out the window.
I need you to go out and pick up my things."
I complied, resentfully. Not so much as a lace curtain stirred
anywhere. Our neighbours were tactful people.
After supper my mother said, "Pack your clothes. We're going to
your grandmother's."
I blinked. "For how long?"
"I don't know. It could be a while."

Grandma was waiting at her front door. She made us coffee and
buttered thin slices of Finn coffee bread which we ate in her
yellow dining room. She asked me about school and then turned her
attention to Mom. The two of them lowered their voices into
confidential tones, a signal that I should excuse myself from the
table.
I wandered into the glassed-in verandah with the comfortably worn
flowered couch and picked up a romance novel off the cushion. I
tried to read it, but my thoughts kept elbowing into the way of the
print.
Mom had actually done it.
I felt a surge of strength and optimism. I would get a job after
school and on weekends to help out. Mom worked shifts at the
hospital as a nurse, so we'd be alright. We'd get a small
apartment. We didn't need much. I wouldn't make demands. Freedom
was luxury enough.
Their murmurs rose and fell from the dining room, the kind of
background dirge I'd been listening to all my life. I snuggled down
on the couch and smiled. Hope was such a sweet, new feeling.
I thought of calling Linda to tell her the news, but decided
against it. This was too big, too much to share just yet. I wanted
to savour the feeling, let it sink in.
I didn't call her the next day either, or the next. Since we went
to different high schools, I didn't see her during the day. I
hugged my secret to myself as I moved between classes. When I got
back to my grandmother's at four, I decided not to spoil the
peacefulness by informing Linda of my whereabouts. I felt mean,
knowing she would be calling my house hourly, but it was the first
vacation I'd had from her in years.
After a week with Grandma, Mom informed me we were going home. She
met me with the announcement as I was coming in from school. "I
talked to your father," she said. "He's not in good shape. He
hasn't been out of bed in days. He'll drink himself to death if
he's allowed to."
I stood in the verandah clutching my books and staring at her,
disbelieving. The scent of peonies drifted in from the garden. It
was not the first time for this. Once he had been in bed a whole
month, talking to himself, getting up only for another bottle.
Eventually Mom got him to the hospital to dry out.
Mom was irritated by my reaction. "You can't leave a man to die,
Christine!"
So that was that. I went to pack, and, after a silent supper with
Grandma, we left.

My room seemed to have shrunk in my absence. The rose-trellised
wallpaper I had always hated suddenly felt suffocating; my father
had considered it appropriate for a girl's room. He wouldn't allow
posters on the walls. Posters marked the paint. Instead, he had
hung a framed print of a Victorian lady over my bed.
The phone shrilled. My sinking stomach told me it was Linda. I
closed my eyes for a moment before answering.
The pathetic, quavering voice had been well-rehearsed. "It's Linda.
Linda Crump. I just wanted to see if you remembered my name."
My grip tightened on the receiver. "Don't be silly, Linda."
"I've been phoning and phoning for days. I guess you never would
have bothered to call me."
"I've been busy." I was in no mood to explain my whereabouts.
"Busy? Hanging out with all your friends from your great new
school?"
"No, Linda, I was alone. But if I had wanted to be with someone
else, I could have. I have the right to see other people."
We were both surprised. I had never spoken like that before, or
felt such quiet authority.
"You've always wanted to get away from me," she spat. "You're just
like everyone else."
I looked out the window at the crab apple tree in the back yard. I
had a strange sensation of floating above the tree even while my
fist remained behind gripping the receiver. In that state I could
say anything without fear of repercussion.
"Maybe you've been pushing me away." Even my voice sounded distant.
A note of fear came into her voice. "What can I do? I'll do
anything you say."
I was floating, drifting higher, like a balloon carried on air
currents. "I don't want you to do anything. Just understand that
I'm changing."
"What am I supposed to do about that?"
"I don't know, Linda. Just be yourself and let me be myself."
"But I don't want to be myself. I want to be like you. You're the
one who's popular and pretty and..."
My balloon exploded. Euphoria became rage. "Why do you pretend that
my life is so great? You make up this stuff like I'm a character
out of some book!"
The silence between us pulsed. I was embarrassed, appalled.
For the first time, she sounded tentative and humble. "I'm sorry,"
she said. "I know I push. But can we still be friends?" Then, in a
tiny, hopeless voice, "You're the only friend I have."
I drew in a breath. As gently as one squeezes the trigger I said,
"I don't think so, Linda." It wasn't what I had intended to say,
but now I realized it was what I had wanted to say from the
beginning. From the very beginning, when she had singled me out on
the playground as the person least likely to drive her away.
The quiet reverberated like the aftermath of an earthquake. I tried
not to picture her at the other end, ashen-faced, unable to
comprehend her disastrous life, but somehow accepting it, as she
had always accepted it.
"Well, I guess this is good-bye," she said, and then, unable to
resist a last touch of the dramatic, "Have a nice life."
I hung up. I thought I would feel relieved. Instead I felt hollow
and trembling, lke after a bout of flu. I went back to my room and
took down the lady in the long dress from her spot on the wall and
slipped her under the bed. Tomorrow I would buy some posters, and
some paint. Dad would be in the hospital drying out for the next
few days. Once he got out, he wouldn't say anything. We would pass
each other in the hall like strangers in a boarding house. He would
resent the changes, but it no longer mattered to me.

That was the last time Linda and I spoke. I heard bits and pieces about
her from time to time: that she was in her school's drama club,
that she married right after high school and divorced a few years
later. I heard she left Thunder Bay for Toronto to find work in
theatre. I sometimes thought about getting in touch, but always
stopped myself. What was there to say? Eventually I lost track of
her.
Sometimes I'll see her eyes looking out wistfully from the face of
one of my students. Some plain, thin girl who tries too hard to
please, who doesn't know yet that she's never going to be invited
to any fourth-grade sleepovers. Some awkward, fat boy who gives
away candy from his lunchpail but can't get anyone to sit next to
him on the bus. I wish I could do something for them. I speak
gently to them. I make vague references to the other students about
kindness and acceptance. It does little good but I need to keep
trying.

Life As We Know It
Rosalind Maki

Andrea Ramsay realizes that at forty-four she should have more sense
than to get involved with her new boss, yet she feels consumed by
a lusty infection. She hasn't told her boss, whose name is Dan
Simms, how old she is. Andrea is no dummy. She knows that forty is
the time when a woman should start lying about her age. Besides,
the affair has yet to begin so the time for honesty is well down
the road.
As she weaves her second-hand Toyota homeward through rush-hour
traffic, Andrea orchestrates the particulars of their relationship.
A very adult affair it will be   no commitment, no complications,
completely self-contained as though they existed on an island out
of time, out of reach of spouses, children, parents, the demands of
getting and spending, of Thanksgiving dinners and summer barbecues.
Oh, they'll exchange gifts, she hopes, memntos rich with
significance   a postcard reproduction of The Garden of Earthly
Delights; a pale green pebble found on the shore near the cabin
where they spend a weekend; a mr. big chocolate bar.
After waiting in line to use the bank machine Andrea queues up at
the Safeway express counter. The cold bag of milk she hugs against
her chest leaves a wet spot on her blouse. The line is long and
moves at the speed of evolution. Andrea stares off into the mall
concourse and imagines Dan and herself together. Poignantly
serious, they walk along a beach or a forest trail holding hands,
heads bowed. They speak in confiding tones as though they were
characters in a Le Carr‚ novel. Their laughter, when it comes, is
soft and throaty like the clucking of hens. They wear bulky
jackets, hiking boots, sturdy cotton clothing. They are dressed for
survival.
The season, either spring or fall, requires a fire in the stone
fireplace of the log cabin where they meet, where the bed, low to
the floor and plump with down, is tucked in the rafters of a
sleeping loft which Andrea first envisions being reached by a
ladder. Reconsidering, she transforms the ladder into a spiral
staircase   almost as rustic and considerably more practical when
you have to get up to use the bathroom at three in the morning.
"Ma'am, that's twelve forty-six," the check-out clerk says,
scowling at the ten dollar bill Andrea offers her.
When she arrives home, it is nearly six. School books litter the
back porch, the kids aren't home, the phone is ringing. It is
Andrea's mother.
"Claire took me up to the hospital this afternoon, to see Mavis
Carson. She's in again, poor dear. Her legs. And you know what
Mavis told us?"
While her mother chatters on, Andrea pins the receiver between her
shoulder and her ear and rolls her pantyhose down and off her legs.
The warm damp nylon twisting up in her hands reminds her of
intestines. She recalls reading somewhere about seers who predict
harvest yields by examining the entrails of slaughtered calves.
What would these nylon viscera foretell for her? she wonders.
Hopefully, something... well, something different.
"Did your cheques come?" Andrea asks. "Okay, I'll take you to the
bank tomorrow after I get off work. Yes, tomorrow. Look, Mom, I've
got to go. The kids have just come in."
Andrea waylays Corey heading into the bathroom. "It was your turn
to start supper," she says.
"I was at Sean's, benching. Hey, I lifted two-fifty." He presses
his nose into his armpit. "Whew. Gotta shower." The boy is built
like his father   square-shouldered, short-necked, muscular.
"Corey, I'm fed up. I expect you to help out. You can't..."
"Mom, Mom, you've got to control that temper of yours."
"If I didn't have kids, I wouldn't have a temper."
Corey ducks into the bathroom. "If you didn't have kids, you
wouldn't have a life." He shuts the door quickly, then opens it a
crack. He flashes her a grin. "Can I have the car tonight?"
Erin crosses the hall and goes into the kitchen. Andrea follows.
Erin wears shorts and a red tank top. Although it is only May her
legs are tanned; her bangs are streaked blonde.
Andrea squints at Erin's hair. "What's this?"
"Bleach. Doesn't it look great?"
"Looks like straw."
Erin shrugs and tosses her head. "When are we going to eat? I'm
starved."
When the phone rings again it is Rick, Andrea's husband. He wants
her to bring supper. Rick builds houses. From May to October, when
the weather is good, he is gone by six-thirty   six during the long
days of June and July   and doesn't come home till after ten. Often
she is already sleeping. For two or three days at a time he seems
no more than undershorts and balled up socks on the bathroom floor.
After she and the kids have eaten, Andrea drives to the
construction site. She parks behind Rick's pick-up, scrambles over
mounds of fractured earth and traverses the trench around the
basement by way of a pair of warped two-by-twelve planks.
The house, a sprawling one-storey, is in the framing stage. The
roof is blue sky. The clean smell of sawdust and new wood reminds
Andrea of the summer before Corey was born when she and Rick were
building their house, when the prospect of having their own place
galvanized them. Now the shingles need replacing, the woodwork is
chipped and there is an irritating squeak under the hall carpet.
Rick is on the cellular phone to the electrician, comparing
schedules. He nods to her as he paces over the bent nails, and the
twisted power cords from the temporary service. Rick never works
without a phone nearby; he hates missing a call.
He carries his supper into the living room and perches in the
window opening to eat canned stew, bread, coffee. Patsy Cline sings
of heartache on the portable radio Rick keeps tuned to the country
station. Andrea sits on a lift of plywood. She feels slightly
guilty feeding Rick canned stew, but she learned years ago that he
doesn't notice what she cooks as long as there is enough of it.
"Do you want to invite your crew to the barbecue?" she says.
"Huh?"
"The barbecue. July 1st."
"Are we doing that again?" He picks up his coffee and walks through
the house, passing through walls. He squints up at the rafters, and
tests the firmness of the studding.
"Well, do you want to ask them?"
"I don't care. Yeah, sure."
"I think we'll do a turkey this year."
"Uh'huh."
Rick wears blue jeans and a T-shirt; the carpenter's apron around
his waist sags with the weight of ten-penny nails. At work today
Dan wore a blue-striped cotton shirt with a button-down collar.
When she brought in his mail, he admired her green dress. "You look
very attractive." His exact words.
"I was thinking about inviting my boss and his family. Is that
okay? You wouldn't mind?"
"It's all the same to me, Andy. Do what you like." Rick runs his
fingers through his coarse red hair. "Will you look at this wall?
Any fool can see it shouldn't be here. Yesterday she decided she
wants the kitchen separate from the family room. Wait till the
drywall goes up. Then it'll be 'Oh, I don't like this. It's too...
confined.' Women   they want privacy and open space all at once."
He grips the end two-by-four and puts his weight against it as
though he would knock the entire section down. "What they want
doesn't exist."
"Your hair is sticking up," Andrea says.

At noon on Tuesday Andrea and Sheryl Wright, her best friend at the
office, drive the half mile from the paper mill to the cemetery,
and on the long grassy slope that overlooks the Kam River they
spread a blanket, stretch out and kick off their shoes. Andrea
bites into the soggy chicken salad sandwich she bought in the mill
cafeteria. Sheryl eats the Greek salad she brought from home in a
Tupperware container. Last night Andrea bagged up an apple and
cheese, but she ate it before morning coffee break.
Sheryl, who is four years younger than Andrea, has shiny dark hair,
cut like a boy's at the back, with a long bang that loops past her
ear and under her chin. Sheryl and her husband Tim own a cabin on
Lake Shebandowan. At the lake Sheryl goes without make-up and slops
around in boxer shorts and one of Tim's old T-shirts. Today she
wears bright red lipstick; her leather earrings match the daffodil
yellow of her short slim skirt.
Andrea glances at her gathered skirt ballooning around her hips and
tosses her sandwich into the bag.
What do they talk about, sitting on the grass below the headstones,
below the grave of Andrea's father? Some days they discuss the
girls in the office   who's in love, out of love, seeking love,
stealing love (this last theme infinitely more titillating yet
striking too close to home these days for Andrea's taste)   or they
commiserate with each other about how overworked they are. That's
what they talk about when there is nothing going on in their own
lives. But today is different.
Sheryl went for a Pap test last week. Now she is waiting for her
doctor to phone with the results. She goes every six months.
Sometimes her cells are normal, sometimes atypical. "I hate it,"
she says. "He always begins 'I have the pathology here.' It makes
me think of the morgue."
It seems to Andrea that her friend is playing Russian Roulette,
waiting for the bullet marked 'cancer.' She says, "If it were me
I'd have a hysterectomy and quit worrying."
Sheryl smiles ruefully. "If it were you, I'd say the same thing."
She offers Andrea a black olive. "Has your mother called today?"
This question, as always, causes them to smile.
Andrea rolls her eyes. "Just once."
"When the kids were small I was on the phone to my mother a hundred
times a day."
Andrea laughs. "Mom, how do you make gravy? Mom, how do you get
orange juice out of the carpet. Mom..."
"...the baby has a fever, Billy swallowed a nickel, Tim's going
fishing again."
Andrea leans back on her elbows. "She misses Dad," she says, and
goes on to tell Sheryl about a night the winter she turned fifteen
when, walking home after skating, she caught sight of her parents
dancing in the living room. "I stopped in the road, in the freezing
cold, and watched them glide through that bright silence. My mother
lifted the corner of her skirt   she has always had these very
feminine gestures   and my father who was a tall man fitted her to
him and held his cheek against hers and guided her around the room.
It was so tender, so intimate, I was embarrassed. I made a huge
racket going into the house." Andrea plucks a dandelion from the
grass and rolls its milky stem between her thumb and forefinger
until the flower becomes a yellow blur. "I didn't understand."
"Understand what?"
"How lucky they were."
When a pair of mergansers fly up from the reeds on the far shore,
the two women collect their things, and as they climb the hill
Andrea reminds Sheryl about the barbecue. "I think I'll do a roast,
a hip of beef," she says. They stop by Andrea's father's grave. Her
father, gone from her life in the space of a phone call    "Andrea,
this is Uncle Bill, I have some bad news"   leaving a wife who
never learned to drive or write a cheque. Andrea tucks her skirt
behind her knees and, crouching, dead-heads the daffodils. She
speaks directly to the granite headstone. "Oh, Dad, why did you let
her be so helpless?"

Corey has made it to the high school wrestling championships. Rick and
Andrea sit in the crowded bleachers at the university field house
watching boys wrestle on blue foam mats spread across the gym floor
while they wait for Corey's last match in the seventy-kilo round
robin.
Rick and the man on Andrea's left hunch forward, elbows on their
knees, and discuss the matches in terms of strategy and maneuvers.
They talk about half nelsons and headlocks; leverage and weight
shift; gaining the superior position. Andrea tries to make sense of
this male conversation that flows past her, tries to relate it to
the red faces, clenched teeth and straining tendons of the boys on
the mats, but the men speak a language she can barely translate.
At coffee this morning, Dan sat on the corner of Andrea's desk and
talked about the compulsion he feels some days to simply pack it
in. This, Andrea understands. He said he was going sailing this
evening on a boat he might buy; that he couldn't wait to gain the
breakwater and strike out for the Giant, put the city behind him.
Andrea is not keen on setting off into the open waters of Lake
Superior and prefers to imagine them at anchor somewhere along the
north shore in a secluded horseshoe bay: The boat is white, the
sail crimson. Dan, oddly dressed in shirt, tie and dress pants,
feeds her strawberries... while she suntans on the cabin roof in a
white bikini... while she dangles her toes in the water wearing a
high-cut one piece suit... while she reclines in a deck chair
swathed in a yellow caftan, an over-sized (yet adorable) straw hat,
and sunglasses. She hopes Dan will buy a motor home instead of a
boat.
Corey climbs the steps two at a time and squeezes in between Rick
and Andrea. "Are you going to watch, Ma?" he asks.
"Who are you fighting?" Rick says.
Corey points out a rangy short-haired boy leaning against the far
wall. "Shit, fighting those skinny guys is like wrestling
toothpaste."
He turns to his mother. "You will watch, you won't take off this
time."
"No," she says.
"Promise?" He waggles a cautionary finger at her, as though he were
the parent and she the child.
Andrea squeezes his hand. "You be careful, eh?"
Corey jumps to his feet. "Hey, I'm gonna win." Rick slaps him on
the back as he bounds down the steps to the gym floor.
"Good luck," Andrea calls.
When Corey and the taller boy crouch face to face in the centre of
the mat, hands poised, and the referee blows his whistle to start
the match, Andrea scrambles over the benches and flees into the
gallery where, hugging herself, she paces the worn tiles in front
of the vending machines. Since Corey entered high school, Andrea
has found watching his matches too nerve-wracking. When he was in
elementary school, wrestling seemed more a game than a contest
small boys rolling about like puppies in the grass. She wanted to
tidy their hair, tuck in their shirts, dry their tears; save them.
A mother's dilemma, she thinks: after you give them life, you give
them your own life. How can you do any less?
Andrea works her way through the crowd toward the edge of the
gallery and gazes down into the gym. The mat where Corey's match
was being fought is empty, and she cannot see her son anywhere.

Another Friday night. Erin is babysitting at the Kumpalas and Corey is
out with his friends; he has taken Andrea's car. Andrea lies on the
couch in her bathrobe, a half-empty bottle of red wine and an empty
bag of marshmallow cookies on the floor beside her. The television
is on without sound; what she hears is Rick snoring in the bedroom.
She rented a movie for them to watch together, but he has fallen
asleep in his clothes, lying on top of the covers. Now, if she
wants to go to bed, she will have to wake him.
She drags the phone across the floor and balances it on her
stomach. This afternoon Andrea suffered a terrible shock. She was
leaving Radio Shack with Erin when she caught sight of herself on
closed circuit TV. Who is that middle-aged woman? ran through her
mind so swiftly that query and recognition were simultaneous. Now
she wants to tell someone, make a joke of it. But who can she call?
Judy has relatives visiting; Pam went to Duluth for the weekend;
Sheryl is at the lake.
She dials her friend Maggie who lives in Montreal. Maggie has a
career. She is executive assistant to the vice-president of finance
in the mill's head office. Maggie gets phone calls from men. At odd
hours. More than once during the week last summer when Andrea was
visiting, a man called after midnight, an engineer from Vancouver
whom Maggie dates when he travels east. Andrea suspects that he is
married, although Maggie has not said and she would never ask. And
the refrigerator in her fifteenth-floor apartment is always bare.
(Maggie has only coffee for breakfast   no wonder she wears a size
six.) Andrea worries that Maggie isn't getting her essential
vitamins and minerals, that she will catch a rare and incurable
virus and die, alone and suffering, in her antique brass double
bed. The morning after Andrea arrived she went out and bought a
hundred dollars worth of groceries and cooked Maggie a real dinner
  broiled boneless chicken, honey-glazed carrots, wild rice. The
rest of the week, the food sat sullen and forgotten in the fridge
while they ate out.
There is no answer in Montreal. The moment Andrea replaces the
receiver the phone rings.
"Andrea, my power's out," her mother says, her voice breathless and
quavering. "I just sat down with my tea to watch Peter Mansbridge,
and poof, darkness. Is yours out? Do you think it's only my
apartment?"
Andrea asks if she's checked with the neighbours.
"Oh, they go to bed so early."
Andrea sighs. "Check the street then."
The phone thunks onto the counter. Andrea strains to hear her
mother's movements in the darkened apartment. She worries that she
will fall over the furniture and break her hip. Why didn't she ask
if she'd found the flashlight?
At last her mother returns to the phone. "The street lights are
out. What do I do?"
"Wait, I guess."
"Maybe they don't know."
"I'm sure they know, Mother."
"Will you call, just in case?"
It takes Andrea fifteen minutes to get through on the trouble line.
When she calls back, her mother reports that the lights are on. "I
tried calling you but your line was busy."
Andrea rolls off the couch. Her foot has fallen asleep and she
stumps into the kitchen like an arthritic crone. She sticks the
wine bottle in the fridge. The phone rings. This time it is Corey
and he is saying, "Ma, I've had a little accident."
During the night Andrea dreams that she and Maggie are shopping in
a crowded bazaar. They wander into an airy, golden silk tent.
Exotic music wavers in the dappled light. The tables are overrun
with objects both lively and seductive. What do they cost?  Andrea
inquires of the merchant. Make choice, he says slyly, I tell you
price. No refunds. No exchanges. Maggie dances among the tables,
laughing as she loads her arms with splendorous things while Andrea
trails behind whining, Can you afford them? How will you pay?

Rick's brother is moving back to Thunder Bay with his new, younger
wife. He wants Rick to find him a place in the country. "One of
those old homesteads, lots of land," he demands. Andrea and Sheryl,
discussing him, have decided his resurrected virility has inspired
in him images of meadows running with children.
Early Sunday morning, when the bells are ringing at St. Paul's,
Andrea and Rick head out in a rented Lumina   Andrea's car will be
in the body shop until Thursday   to an old farm off Hazelwood
Drive where they meet the real estate agent, a stout vigorous woman
wielding a black briefcase. While they walk up from the barn
through the bowed and glistening grass, the agent natters on about
the investment potential of rural property. She points to a small
frame building with a stubby brick chimney and mossy shingles.
"Those old Finns," she says, shaking her head, "first the
steambath, then the house."
Rick and Andrea wait in the porch while the agent unlocks the
kitchen door and shoves it open with her hip. She leads them
through the rooms like ducks on a string. The house is still
possessed by the old man's things: a calendar pinned to the wall,
the year frozen at January; a plaid shirt on a hook behind the
bedroom door; a Player's tobacco tin, cigarette papers, a rat-tail
comb on the dresser. She waves out of existence the water marks on
the ceiling, the tilting floors, the worn silvery triangle on the
linoleum that links stove, sink and table. It seems to Andrea that
sunlight itself is holding the curtains together.
"The old boy lived alone after his mother died," the agent says. "A
nephew in Minnesota inherited." The place smells of cats and old
clothes.
Opening a narrow door off the living room, the agent reveals a
staircase to the attic. She turns her back to Andrea and says to
Rick, "There's a bedroom and some storage space up here, if you'd
care to take a look."
Andrea leaves the house and follows a worn path to a garden plot
overrun with twitch grass and dandelions. The sun is warm; she
strokes her bare arms. Rick woke her at six this morning to make
love. Now she feels languorous and silken. Behind the house she
discovers a rough wood door in the side of the hill. She pushes it
open and enters the first chamber of a root house. She hesitates in
the darkness, afraid of mice or worse, snakes. After her eyes
adjust, she opens the inner door and ducks into an earth-walled
storage room. The bitter odour of decay catches in her throat. In
the half light she discerns the slumped forms of bagged vegetables
and, ranked on a shelf to her right, jars of mustard pickles
labelled in a woman's hand.
When Andrea returns to the kitchen, she finds the agent hovering
over an open trapdoor. She hears Rick moving around in the dugout
basement. "Lovely morning," Andrea offers.
The agent stares at Andrea as though seeing her for the first time.
"Yes," she manages. Andrea is tempted to whack the woman with her
own briefcase and shove her sausage-body into the dugout.
Below them, out of the gloom, Rick's face appears; then, like a
red-haired Orpheus, he rises from the cellar.
As they drive out to the main road, Rick says, "I didn't like the
look of those floor joists. They're asking too much. Eighty-
thousand. It's the acreage, and the timber."
"I wonder what became of the cats," Andrea says. She swivels round
to gaze at a sparrow hawk on the hydro wire. "He had a woman there,
you know. How sad. Waiting till his mother died to start his own
life."
"What woman, Andy?"
"The one who made the pickles."
When they turn onto Hazelwood, Rick guns the engine. The car
springs forward, pinning Andrea against the seat. He drives so fast
she is both frightened and elated by his recklessness.
"For God's sake, Rick, slow down," she says, then, immediately,
"Oh, go ahead if you want." But the car is losing speed, and as
they head home she cannot dispel a feeling of regret.

Andrea is catching up on the filing when she realizes it is two
o'clock and she has not once heard from her mother. She tries her
mother's number, but gets no answer. Later, when she is typing the
minutes of the grievance committee meeting, her mother's face
superimposes itself on the computer screen.
Andrea leaves work ten minutes early, ahead of the rush; she runs
an orange light at Arthur Street and, swerving into the residence
driveway, clips a rolling garbage can. Standing in the hall
fumbling the key into the lock, Andrea hears the radio playing. She
calls out as she enters, but no one replies. The kitchen is tidy,
no cups in the sink or crumbs on the counter. She switches off the
radio and listens. The stillness oscillates with the spinning of
dust motes and the beating of her heart. In the living room, her
mother's purse sits on the console TV.
Andrea moves toward the bedroom. When she relives this moment lying
in bed tonight, she will be unable to recall passing the open
bathroom door or the kid's school pictures hanging in the hall.
Her mother is lying on the bed. She wears cotton slacks, a blouse,
sandals, a blue floral bib-front apron. One arm is folded across
her stomach. Her eyes are closed.
"Mother?" Andrea says from the foot of the bed. "Mom?"
Her mother's eyes open and close and open again. "Oh, Andrea," she
says finally in a dull voice. "You're home. Help me up, dear. I
have to get your father's supper."
Andrea takes her mother's arm and pulls her upright, then sinks
onto the bed beside her. "Rest a minute."
"I have to get the chicken into the oven. Bring your homework into
the kitchen. Keep me company." Her mother suddenly smiles and
shakes her head. But she continues to sit and her hand works folds
into the cotton spread.
"I'll get you a glass of water."
The older woman clutches Andrea's arm. "I'm so afraid."
"So am I."

Andrea parks her car beside Safeway and walks down to Cumberland
Street, where she has arranged to meet Dan. For the benefit of
passersby she walks erect, eyes front, arms swinging: she wants
people to believe she knows what she's doing. She spots Dan's
Prelude circling the block and quickens her step. When he comes
round again, she is waiting at the corner. She slides into the
front seat and as she hauls the door shut he pulls into traffic and
they're away. They head out on the Trans-Canada toward Nipigon,
Toronto, the east coast. "Keep driving," she says. "Don't stop till
you see salt water." Dan laughs. He must think she's joking.
"What did you tell them at the office?" he asks. He drives fast,
deftly, his fingertips light on the wheel. His linen blazer,
carefully folded, lies on the back seat, and his shirtsleeves are
rolled to his elbows. The hair on his forearms lies dark and fine
against his white skin; she wants to touch him, she wants him to
touch her.
"Sick headache," she says in answer to his question. They discuss
work, the weather, salute the lone sailboat tacking across the
restless waters of the bay. Andrea would like to talk about her
mother's transitory episode but feels somehow that, given the
tentative nature of their relationship, it would be inappropriate
to invoke images of family members, particularly one as keenly
appraising as one's mother.
Somewhere near Pass Lake Dan pulls into a motel. Andrea waits in
the car while he gets them a room. What name will he use? Will he
sign as Mr. and Mrs.? Will the clerk believe him? Or care? She
feels slightly embarrassed by the absurdity of it: a few
compliments, his hand on her shoulder; then, at last weekend's
staff barbecue, too many drinks, a little teasing, some quick
breathless necking behind the honeysuckle and now here she is,
reclining below windshield level outside a shabby motel that offers
"Lighthouse Keeping" on a portable plastic sign.
As soon as Dan closes the motel room door behind them, he kisses
her, a studied careful kiss, then he goes to the night table and
removes his watch. He sits on the bed and takes off his shoes.
What? Andrea thinks, still standing by the door clutching her
purse. No endearments? No desperate embrace? No rending of
garments? She walks round the bed to the far side. The chenille
spread is faded blue, half its circular pattern of tufts sucked out
by too many launderings. The room is cold and exudes a musty smell
of neglect. Andrea props her purse beside the lamp   she wishes
they had picked up a bottle of wine, she could use a drink right
now   and sits on the bed. She pushes off her shoes. What next? Her
blouse and skirt? Let Dan see the rolls of flab that bunch up
around her waist when she bends over to take off her pantyhose?
Maybe she should keep her blouse on, remove her skirt and
pantyhose, her panties, like she does for her gynaecologist. Just
the lower half please. The business end.
Andrea starts to laugh, a giggle at first, trapped in her mouth by
the pressure of her fingertips, a giggle that swells, strains,
explodes through her lips and now she's roaring with laughter,
guffawing, hiccuping with laughter, like sobs, that shakes her body
and rips her stomach muscles, and she cannot stop, she might die
laughing. It is all too funny, hilarious really, this room, their
mission, what they'll feel compelled to utter, to feign. Spent, she
flops against the mattress, slides to the floor and tips onto her
side like Raggedy Ann. She is still giddy when Dan's legs appear in
her line of vision, heavily-muscled calves clasped in black
executive-length lycra-and-cotton socks. Oh God, does he make love
with his socks on? she wonders. Imagining what other bits of male
anatomy may be visible from this vantage, Andrea doesn't dare look
up so she rolls her eyes downward, spies the tiniest hole opening
up in his sock, a tear really, made by his big toenail, a corner of
its untrimmed length pathetically exposed.
Oh, she knows all his secrets! How his legs twitch in the night,
the fussy way he has of sniffing the milk before he pours it, his
peevishness, his indigestion, his gas. How ordinary he suddenly
seems, like any middle-aged man you might pass in the street.
Somebody's husband. It is the last thing in all the world that she
needs.

ANDREA 2: Fool.
ANDREA 1: Don't think. Walk.
ANDREA 2: Dummy. Have you lost your mind?
ANDREA 1: Light's red. Stop. Wait. It's alright, nothing
          happened. Walk. Smile.
ANDREA 2: What do you want? You are one greedy woman, Andrea
          Ramsay. A few months on rations in Somalia would
straighten     out your priorities.
ANDREA 1: You sound like my mother.
ANDREA 2: (sing-song, goading). The car, Andrea, it's sitting
     outside Safeway where you hid it at noon so you could sneak
     off with Dan.
          ANDREA stops on the bridge, grabs hold of the rail, gazes
down. Planted beyond her right shoulder is the Lutheran church,
yellow brick, bulky, stolid. The sounds of traffic and the creek
become subtly apparent, like the growl of distant thunder.)
ANDREA 2: (still sing-song, approaching mockery). Feel that cold
     wind off the lake, Andrea. Don't you wish you had your
     sweater, the one you left hanging on the back of your chair
     when you rushed out of the office? What else have you left
     behind, Andrea Ramsay, wife of Rick, mother of Corey and Erin,
     daughter of Evelyn and George?
ANDREA 1: (continuing up the hill). To hell with the car. To hell
     with the sweater. They can toss it into the stationery
     cupboard along with the worn-out shoes and dog-eared romance
     novels abandoned by other departing secretaries. I won't go
     back.
ANDREA 2: A fine mess.
ANDREA 1: I hate him.
ANDREA 2: Rick?
ANDREA 1: Dan. Dumping me off at Taco Time like some ten dollar
     trick. I should get back to the office. You don't mind walking
     to your car? God, it hurts.
ANDREA 2: He probably wouldn't have behaved any differently if
     you'd gone to bed with him.
ANDREA 1: Oh. (ANDREA brings her hand to her cheek.)
ANDREA 2: What did you expect, girl? Love?

"Mom! Are you deaf?"
Andrea turns to find Erin running to catch up, her bare arms
hugging an armload of books to her chest. "What are you doing here,
anyway?" her daughter says breathlessly. "Where's the car? Can we
have take-out for supper? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You look kind of funny. Say, I need a new bathing suit."
"What's wrong with your old one?"
"I want a two-piece."
"Oh, Erin, not yet," Andrea says, unable to keep the pleading tone
out of her voice.
Erin waves and hollers as a jeep, crammed with teenagers, makes a
U-turn in the street and careens to a stop beside them.     "Hi,
Mrs. Ramsay," says the boy behind the wheel, Kevin, whom she has
known since he was in diapers, this boy with the broad chest and
muscular legs and bright open face, this boy who makes Andrea feel
frayed, faded; anachronistic.
"Thanks," Erin says, dumping her books into her mother's arms, and
she swings her legs over the side and squeezes into the back seat
beside a boy Andrea has never laid eyes on who immediately loops
his arm across Erin's shoulders.
The jeep leaps into traffic, leaving Andrea on the curb in an
updraft of rock music and laughter. On a whim, she arranges Erin's
textbooks and three-ring binder into a square bundle and swings it
onto her hip; then, dodging a woman pushing a twin stroller, she
heads homeward. Whether it's the fault of the books or her middle-
aged hips, Andrea doesn't feel at all like sixteen, can't tease out
even a whiff of memory from that time when she believed with her
whole heart that at any given moment something wonderful could
happen.
When Andrea turns the corner onto her street, she starts to cry.
                                *

IF YOU CONTINUE TO BELIEVE IN YOUR HEART OF HEARTS THAT AT ANY
GIVEN MOMENT SOMETHING WONDERFUL WILL HAPPEN, TURN TO PAGE 133.

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT PRE-MENOPAUSAL MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN ARE SLAVES TO
THEIR HORMONES, RETURN TO THE FIRST PAGE OF THIS STORY.

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THE THEME OF LITERATURE, AND OF LIFE, IS ALWAYS
LOVE, ADVANCE TO PAGE 135.
                            *

Because Andrea is still crying as she approaches her house she fails
to notice the blinding white convertible parked in front or the
tall handsome man resting against its rear fender until he says,
"Hi, beautiful."
Andrea hesitates, not wanting to make the embarrassing error of
assuming he is speaking to her.
"Don't you have a smile for an old friend, Andrea?" he says.
"Ken!" she squeals as she drops Erin's schoolbooks and throws her
arms around his neck. "Ken. I can't believe it. How long has it
been?"
"Too long," he says, and his arms circle her waist and he pulls her
close.
They cling together like trellis and vine, and Andrea catches Mrs.
Murphy across the way cracking the venetian blind at her bedroom
window to get a better look. Well, let her look, Andrea thinks.
"What are you doing here, Ken? Oh, it's so good to see you," she
says, laying her hands lightly against his chest, aware of his lean
warm body under his denim shirt. "Are you on holiday?"
He smiles into her eyes. "You might call it a working holiday. I
have some unfinished business."
"I haven't seen you since you went to California after graduation."
"I wrote. You didn't answer."
"I was going with Rick." She steps back, twists her wedding ring.
"It took you a year to write."
He tells her about the computer software business he started in his
garage in the seventies; how it grew into a multi-million dollar
enterprise; how, when he grew tired of it, he sold out to IBM. "Now
I own a villa on the Riviera, a penthouse in New York, a cabin in
Big Sur, an uchi in Japan." Ken lays his hands on her shoulders.
"Andrea," he says, "it's all dust without you."
"I'm married, Ken. I have a family."
"But are you happy, Andrea?"
She stares into the middle distance. "Of course."
He tilts her face toward his and removes her sunglasses. "Then why
have you been crying?" He traces the tearstains on her cheeks. "Now
that I've found you again, I won't let you go. You're my girl,
Andrea. I'll be here when you get up in the morning and when you go
to bed at night. I'll be here in rain and sun, and snow too, if it
takes that long. I have the tenacity of a pit bull."
"I'm not the girl you knew in high school. I'm forty-four, I'm..."
"You're beautiful."
"I could lose a few pounds."
Ken throws back his head and laughs. "I love you, Andrea."  "But
Rick...?"
He pulls her to him once again. "Rick hasn't the sensibility to
appreciate a woman like you, Andrea. You're no more than his cook
and housekeeper."
Suddenly Andrea sees the empty years ahead of her, sees Rick and
herself heading like two trains on separate tracks toward the
horizon, their coming together merely a trick of diminishing
perspective.
Andrea embraces Ken, and as she fits her body against his, the
tension in her muscles drains away and the weight lifts from her
heart. "Oh Ken, darling," she smiles.

                          _____________

[TESSA: THIS IS THE SECOND OPTIONAL ENDING. SORT OF A PICK-YOUR-
OWN-ADVENTURE.]

Andrea is on her knees planting petunias in the strip of dirt beside
the house when Rick's truck rattles into the driveway behind her.
Weariness prevents her from getting up, from even looking at him.
Minutes pass before the truck door slams and his bootheels click
across the pavement. He sits on the steps, rests his elbows on his
knees. She senses him watching her. She stabs the earth with her
trowel and thrusts a plant into the narrow hole; she pinches off
the flowerhead.
"Every year," she says, "my mother planted pink petunias beside the
house. And here I am, doing the same damn thing." She drops her
gardening gloves into the empty flat and gets to her feet. "On the
way home from the clinic yesterday, we drove down Christina Street.
She hasn't seen the old house since she moved into the apartment.
Rick, there were pink petunias in the side garden. You know what
they're called?" she says, shaking the plastic label at him.
"Happiness."
"I called you at work," Rick says. "Sheryl said you went home
sick."
She brushes the dirt from her knees.
He looks toward the garage, which stands open and acutely vacant.
"Andy, where's the car?"
She moves to the steps, settles one tread above him. She studies
the shape of his head, the grey that spatters his red hair. "When
I was nineteen," she says, "all I wanted was a house, children, you
as my husband."
From the neighbour's kitchen window come the sounds of suppertime,
sounds that Andrea immediately recognizes and interprets   ringing
pot lids, running water, chiming silverware, the whoosh of a
refrigerator door; laughter, chatter    knitted up into a dense
broad homely fabric. A phrase, a thread, at once commonplace and
profound, detaches itself and settles at their feet: "We could take
in the cherry festival and visit your parents at the cottage on the
way home."
Rick closes his fingers around Andrea's ankle. "I don't want to
lose you."
Andrea rests her forehead against his back, moves her hand over his
solid, familiar body, as familiar to her as her own. He surprises
her, then, by asking if the plans are set for the barbecue. "I'll
string Japanese lanterns in the trees, if you like."
"Are you sure you want this?"
"We can't quit now. Your mother's probably baked enough pies for a
mill picnic."
"Which we'll need if Corey shows up with his buddies again."
Rick squeezes her thigh. "Let's go inside, lie down."
"In a minute," Andrea says, her voice catching in her throat.
"Please. Don't turn around." She presses against him, holds on,
holds on for dear life.

Never Say Never
Karen Keeley Wiebe

A red glow shimmers across the warm asphalt and I'm thinking, this is
twilight. And then I'm thinking about the road and how it stretches
toward midnight, its surface scarred by a thousand skid marks,
ghost-vehicles come and gone, as I lie on the gravel shoulder with
darkness falling, such a silly expression, darkness falling,
dropping, like a curtain, an apple, a anchor. . . . I am so cold.
The gravel is sharp, uncomfortable, digging into my legs, my chest,
my chin. If I were a man...but no! No sense thinking on that. If
wishes were pennies I'd have a copper crypt filled to overflowing
and so much good that'd do. I lay my head on one arm. My cheek
sticks to the stiff prickly hairs, the goose bumps, and I wonder if
a body can think itself warm.
One Halloween, when I was small, my grandmother handed out homemade
Popsicles to the neighbourhood children, a wonderful treat, except
that the weather warmed up to summer conditions, unheard of at the
end of October. The trees had already turned: golds, reds, mottled
shades of orange with bits of brown, bits of old blood I used to
think   each tree about to shed its load. We dressed up in
mothballed cardigans and scuffed military boots; owlish eyes
painted budgie blue, black mascara scarred across our foreheads,
lipstick bleeding from chapped lips; all of us dehydrated inside
our suffocating costumes. The Popsicles were a gooey mess by the
end of the night. I managed to swallow a couple of bites before the
slush disintegrated and plopped onto the verandah. My brother
Harold cuffed me on the side of the head and my vision blurred, the
sight of two Harolds spinning me free from my grandmother's front
porch, the cockeyed steps reverberating under my feet. The old
Siamese cat screeched a high vaulted soprano, which was the only
thing about Halloween that Harold enjoyed.
I waited for him at the end of the wild walk and watched him
crouch, his fingers slicing through the thick cobwebs under the
verandah, his voice soft and low, "Here kitty, kitty...," and I
knew he wanted to wrap his fingers around that cat's throat,
squeeze and make it sing.
Why am I lying at the side of the road? I am trying to fly. If I
stretch out, arms ahead of me, fingers splayed, my feet behind and
lost to the darkness, I can see myself floating, gliding, zipping
along, my body skimming the ground, the gravel under me. I can
almost taste the dry dust of granite and shale, the stench of old
dirt crusted with the stink of ozone... and in the ditches the
stagnant water that rises with each new rain, and then seeps back
down, sucked by gravity until it can go no further.
My grandmother used to say, "Never say never." She was a woman who
spoke her thoughts aloud, who talked with her eyes crossed, the
scope of her vision pulled into tight double lines. "A better way
to see things," she sometimes said, especially when Harold and I
were underfoot. Her oldest daughter, my mother, worked days at the
Crossroads Diner, a refurbished Quonset hut scented with cinnamon
and diesel fuel and squirts of WD-40, a meeting place for truckers
and preachers. On the odd evening that my mother came home she
would loosen her single braid, thick as her wrist, and spill her
dark hair around her shoulders, then she would sit on the worn
couch, her legs folded under her, and smoke duMaurier filter tips,
the swirls of smoke creating an elusive halo which dissipated no
matter how careful I was not to disturb the air.
My grandmother created best while staring out the window. "It is
possible to survive one's mistakes," she would tell us, an
expression of lost love in her eyes, for what or whom, who could
say? "Cultivate criticism and you cultivate uniqueness." And while
I didn't always understand her words, I drew strength from the fact
that a fox doesn't have to define a chicken, or a terrier define a
rat, to know purpose.
Often I hid under the folds of my grandmother's skirt, her thread-
darned Spandex nylons prickly against my cheek, her warmth keeping
me safe from Harold, and although my grandmother said, "Never say
never," I wished with all my heart I had never seen Harold, never
known Harold, never had to suffer his torments, his rage, his
threats aimed at anything alive and breathing, especially me, three
years younger and female.
The outhouse was my sanctuary, my jail. If my grandmother's legs
were out of reach I'd race for the outhouse and bolt the door from
the inside, my heart pounding, sweat tickling my armpits,
everything itchy, even the insides of my ears. I'd sit for hours
holding the roll of toilet paper, trying to ease the damp sheets
apart without ripping them. By mid-afternoon there would be no air,
nothing breathable anyway, and I'd take shallow breaths between my
lips, the smell of excrement trapped in my nose, my stomach
churning sludge. High in the corners of the outhouse, spiderwebs
held the remnants of a fly, a half-eaten wasp. Sometimes I would
see a spider, silent and still, its body the size of my big toe,
and I'd imagine dozens of eyes watching me.
The last of the sunlight is dying in the west, and the air is alive
with the sounds of crickets and frogs. I feel the grass brush my
fingertips. I smell the purple clover. A twenty-foot-tall willow
grows on the far side of the ditch and I stare at the shadowed
branches hanging so that their tips graze the dog grass. I remember
sitting cross-legged behind the blistered clapboard church, my
friends and I pulling those yellow stems between our lips, daring
each other to yank hard, a hand reaching out, grabbing, and the dry
hollow seeds sticking to our teeth, our tongues   but oh, how we
laughed! We spit, and wiped our lips on the backs of our sun-
browned arms while sweat glistened on our noses. We laughed a lot
then, when endless summer days truly were endless and tomorrow
would never come because... well...
I have spent countless hours watching the highway unravel behind
me, a ribbon of asphalt spewing out from the back of the truck, the
pavement materializing under the tailgate. The truck is old, with
worn tires and a noisy exhaust, but Harold is good, mechanical and
all.
There is a lot of rock in northern Ontario, big grey boulders with
swirls of rust catching the sunlight, half buried in the earth,
their weight holding them down. I used to think of a child wedged
in its mother's womb, both of them dead, both with glassy eyes
staring at the heavens, or staring at nothing, their unanswered
Why? lost in the never-ending wind.
In those days, the rain came most often in the early afternoons. It
slashed the window panes turned "black as the devil's mirror," to
hear my grandmother tell it. She would flick on every light in the
house, and then I'd sit on the wooden stool and watch her hands,
tiny and wrinkled, fold and push and stretch the bread dough, the
scent of yeast growing and expanding inside me until I thought I'd
lift off the stool and float free, bounce from the Frigidaire to
the Moffat Range and back again, happy in my thoughts that Harold
couldn't touch me.
His black eyes flashed anger, his face fisted into a scowl as he
sat in the corner where my grandmother had parked him "to reflect
on his soul," but Harold's reflections made him wiser to the world.
By age ten he no longer heard my grandmother when she said, "Pull
rather than push, child, for it is the wise who are followed and
not forgotten face down in the dirt."
This trip I laid low in the back of the half-ton and pretended I
was alone. I almost forgot about Harold up front, almost forgot
about his ugly face smiling on the inside of the cracked
windshield, the radio blasting out that Old-Time Rock 'n Roll,
almost forgot I was wishing he'd stop short and crash that ugly mug
of his right through the safety glass. I was thinking it might be
an improvement and then I found myself giggling, a fist shoved
tight to my mouth, my teeth biting down hard on my knuckles   God,
it hurt, but felt good too. Pain. Another constant. Another
something to prove I was alive even if my body doesn't feel,
doesn't want to feel.
Too many summers come and gone. And me too skinny to fight back. I
have tried though, especially at the start. I had a knack for
kicking and punching, even used my teeth a few times until Harold
grabbed my throat and squeezed. I thought he'd broken my windpipe,
no amount of coughing brought air into my lungs. I remember a rush
in my ears, the ocean swirling and angry inside my skull. I've seen
the ocean. Harold's taken me as far as Vancouver Island, to a place
called Cathedral Grove, and if there is a God, He truly lives in
that forest, the ancient Douglas firs so tall they annihilate the
sun.
Harold's fists did a number on my cheekbones and I couldn't see
clearly for a week. I got to wondering if this was why my
grandmother saw her world cross-eyed much of the time. Maybe she'd
had a Harold in her life. I know my mother did.
Harold calls me Red because of the way my face mottles when I'm
angry. He says I'm angry too much. He's fed up with the fights, the
arguments, the needless expenditure of energy. Big words for a boy
who spent his days sitting in the rear of the classroom, pulling
wings off flies and collecting their bodies in a jelly jar, the
smooth glass rolling around inside the belly of his desk; nothing
else in there but broken bits of pink eraser.
Before I fly, I'm going to imagine I'm the wind, able to slip
between the branches of balsam, birch, the towering tamaracks.
I sense, hear the half-ton returning. It approaches from the end of
John Stones Road, its engine labouring, spark plugs misfiring. Or
is it the pistons? Harold would know, he knows everything
mechanical   maniacal my grandmother would say, and laugh. My, how
that woman could laugh. When lightning split the sky, she would
stand at the window and say, "Big rivers out there," to get our
attention. Big rivers meant ditches overflowing, rushing thunderous
water carrying smashed sawhorses, broken boards prickly with nails,
a doll's pram flipping, spinning; fence posts and barbed wire and
who-knows-what caught in the murky depths.
I close my eyes and spread my fingers. I open my mind. The truck
approaches, its headlights shining off the asphalt, and I lift into
the air, my hands skim the grass, my vision blurs, giving me this
beauty twice over; giving me Harold doubled over in anger, which
makes no sense because it was he who cast me aside   but oh, how
he's given me twice the strength to fly!
The night falls silent, the crickets and frogs pregnant with
expectation, waiting...
I open my eyes and stare at the moon, a circle of light that shines
in my mind   one moon, alone   and my vision pulls into tight
double lines: I, my grandmother; my grandmother, I. The memory of
raindrops is wet upon my cheeks. I taste the salt, smell the ocean,
hear the remembered shrieks of childish laughter which sets me free
though the headlights catch me, hold me; and Harold cranks the
radio wide open, opening the night to the sounds of Rock 'n Roll.

The White Boat
John Pringle

When Vladimir and Sonya Chernenko visited us in Montreal, my brothers
would swarm for their attention like dogs around a beloved master
and mistress. Shoulder jumps, skin-the-cat, mock wrestling matches
  George and Tom would work themselves into a slavering canine
frenzy for this couple who, although childless, claimed to love
children.
I couldn't stand them. The Chernenkos, that is. They were
absolutely phoney. Beneath their veneer of joviality and
playfulness, I could see nasty people. My sister Mary shared my
opinion. "Mr. and Mrs. Creepola are here," she'd warn in a rising
sing-song, "time to disappeeeear!" and she'd spin down the hall
waving an imaginary wand, sidestep into her bedroom and put the
Ramones on her stereo at high volume.
My father would welcome the Chernenkos at the door, his voice
ringing with false sincerity through the stupid jokes and forced
laughter, while my mother gushed, "Oh well, isn't that wonderful!
I just love that dress!" It was all such a performance, I wanted to
hide like my sister, or go slam a rubber puck against the basement
wall.
Inevitably, the Chernenkos would stay for supper, forcing my sister
and me to surface from our sanctuaries and participate in this
charade of good manners and conviviality. Vladimir would always
speak to me with his mouth full, his accent sonorous and thick:
"So, Nicolas...how are you doing in school, eh? You're such a quiet
boy, I bet you do very well, just like your sister, so shy and well
behaved." And then, while heaping another gargantuan serving of
mashed potatoes onto his greasy plate, without waiting for a reply
he'd speak to one of my brothers. It was as if, by acknowledging
Mary and me, he'd fulfilled some sort of obligatory rite and could
now focus on Tom and George, who collectively thought that the sun
rose and set out of this man's backside.
"Are you quarterback again this year, George?" (chomp, chomp,
chomp, Vladimir's whiskers go up and down)
"Yes. And we won our first two games," replies George, like a good
little gopher.
"Really? That's good." (gurgle, slurp, chomp) "And you too, Tommy,
are you on the same team?"
"Yeah, I'm halfback, made three touchdowns already."
"That's great! Got a real pair of champions here, Henry! You should
be proud!"
My father would nod and offer Vladimir more wine, joking about how
when he was young the game was much different, tougher of course,
and then Vladimir would go on about his great soccer career, though
he called it football just so we wouldn't forget that he was
European, as if that was a holy blessing, and Sonya would butt in
and tell Vladimir that he was more or less past his prime, and I
liked her for that. But then, after too much wine, she'd start
flirting with my father, making my mother uncomfortable though Dad
loved it, and Mary would kick me under the table while doing
discreet Sonya imitations, batting her eyelashes at me and swirling
her milk glass.
Sooner or later the conversation always came around to THE DREAM:
the Chernenko's idyllic plan to build a sailboat of exquisite
perfection and sail off into the Pacific. Though it sounded
wonderfully romantic and adventurous, I scarcely believed it would
happen. "Bullshit" often came to mind as I lingered on the edges of
this conversation.
It was Vladimir who really irked me. He was a university lecturer
and fancied himself as God's gift to young female students. He had
these Paul Newman eyes, and he was a big man, a seafarer: Vladimir
of the Seven Seas. You'd almost expect to come across a statue of
him in the park one day. Covered in pigeon shit. He was just so
full of it.
His wife, on the other hand, was a little more believable. A bit of
a lush, but a gifted one, the brains of the outfit; an architect,
and a good one. When I saw her sketches I began to have a glimmer
of faith in their sailboat: A sloop with a narrow beam, a total
length of thirty-five feet on deck and a depth of keel that would
keep her stable in rough seas. The curved symmetrical lines of the
hull especially impressed me, as did the specifications for
different species of wood: a white oak keelson; teak and mahogany
for the deck and cabin; laminated western red cedar for the hull,
heat-set with epoxy for strength. There were various sail plans,
sketches of a figurehead, and of course, space for a small bar
below deck. The name Enchantress graced the top of each draft.
Before a single board had been cut, the sailboat had become more
genuine than their laughter and verbal glamorizing.
Mary called it their "I love me time" when they talked about the
boat, and after they left she would call me to her room, stuff a
pillow under her sweater and do Vladimir imitations in a boastful
haughty accent.
"Oh, yes, it will be a work of art, you know! Sonya has done a
wonderful job, so talented she is! Fix me drink, dahling! Then come
rub my belly!"
Then, imaginary martini glass in hand, she would imitate Sonya,
swinging her hips, pouting ridiculously and sounding like a
disdainful Zsa Zsa Gabor. "Oh Vladimir, come to me, you handsome
goat, let us test our bed, the one we will have on zee sailboat,
built to withstand a meeeeeeellion orgasms!"
Before long, I'd be bumping about the room with a pillow stuffed
under my belt, acting out all sorts of lewd situations. We showed
little mercy toward the Chernenkos when they existed under the
spell of our imaginations.

Ten years passed and the Chernenkos squirrelled away their money while
THE DREAM materialized. I grew up and attended university in
Vancouver, not far from where their precious craft first slid into
the sea. As I dawdled my way through school, a twenty-two-year-old
wondering what in the world to do with my life, I often found
myself daydreaming of the Chernenkos. Like a latent virus they had
stayed in touch with me, phoning at odd hours or showing up
unexpectedly at my apartment. I couldn't understand their interest
in me, other than my fascination with their great retirement plan.
Perhaps that is what kept them coming: I was an audience. A silent
cynical one. What greater challenge to such achievers?
My friends were curious. Who are those people? they'd ask. Parents?
Aunt and uncle? Family friends? A sailboat? Really? Just like that,
they're going to sail off into the sunset? Far out!
So the Chernenkos acquired a token of status in my life. Midway
through composing a French oral or a history essay, my pen would
stray to the margins and doodle palm fronds, or the mythical boat
itself anchored in a turquoise harbour, the fabled couple sipping
syrupy concoctions of fruit and rum while sea breezes tickled their
tanned skins.
When I saw the boat in the harbour for the first time, what struck
me most was how utterly white and polished it was, as if it had
been cleaned by a team of dental technicians. I could see these
technicians, as if in a Salvador Dali painting, in white coats and
spectacles, scrubbing away, paying meticulous attention to the most
picayune detail, then applying a glossy hallucinatory finish while
the Chernenkos peered anxiously over their shoulders.
I became increasingly intrigued with this tableau. The image of a
white boat on a turquoise sea is like one cloud in an azure sky, or
a small bright flower in the desert. It shines of purity, of
impossible perfection. If you gaze into such an image too deeply it
will break your heart, yet it sustained a small part of me through
a rather unhappy year of "higher" education. I could only begin to
understand what the white boat meant to the Chernenkos.
Was it an anticlimax when finally the alabaster boat bobbed in
Vancouver harbour? All they needed now were sails, and over this
they quarrelled bitterly. Vladimir was determined to buy a decent
set of dacron sails and be done with it. Sonja, however, envisioned
an extra touch: a hand-sewn purple dragon   her Chinese
astrological birth sign   emblazoned upon the spinnaker like a
challenge to the elements. "No expense has been spared," she
argued. "Why should we not have a dragon? It will bring us luck."
A gaudy, egocentric waste of time and money, Vladimir called it,
but in the end he relented, grudgingly, stoically. So Sonya
sketched her oriental coat-of-arms and hired two sisters reknowned
for their handiwork to fabricate the beast and attach it to the
spinnaker. The matter seemed resolved, but a residue of tension
lingered whenever the subject came up.
Early one morning, too early, Vladimir phoned. In an excited voice
he urged me to meet him at an address in Chinatown that afternoon.
I walked through a fine rain and met him on the sidewalk outside a
narrow two-storey house. He immediately gripped my arm and led me
to the door, all the while babbling about the sails. Then out of
the blue he blurted, "You've got to meet these ladies, Nicolas!"
"What ladies?" I asked.
"The seamstresses! Absolutely beautiful. Come on!"
We were greeted by Kiera, a wisp of good manners and shyness, so
graceful and thin she seemed to float. I remember the strength in
her hand when Vladimir introduced us, the long feline fingers, the
quizzical smile. The sister, Kai, was a replica of Kiera, adroit
and delicate, showing us just where to sit and arranging the
cushions in a luxurious room crowded with multicoloured piles of
fabric.
The sisters served us tea, and then, at Vladimir's request,
unfurled the purple dragon across the carpet. It was indeed a work
of art. Its eyes glimmered with ancient subterranean fire as it
reared defiantly. Flames entwined its neck. "It's beautiful," I
told the sisters. "Against the whiteness of the boat..."
"Yes, the bloody thing is nearly complete," Vladimir muttered,
staring distractedly out the window. "Just a few loose ends...."
His voice trailed off, then rebounded. "See how quickly they work,
Nicolas! And quality work! Their hands are so skilful." He took
Kiera's hand and stroked it as one would a favourite cat. She
beamed at me and withdrew her fingers like a retractable claws.

A few days later it was Sonya who phoned. "Come to dinner tonight,"
she said. When I arrived, she was alone.
"Vladimir will be along shortly, he's working on the boat..." She
was breathless and seemed preoccupied. And she'd been drinking. She
immediately poured me a glass of red wine.
"I haven't had time to think. It's hard to give everything up, you
know. Just sell everything and run away on a sailboat with an old
goat of a husband! All my clothes, Nicolas! Can you imagine what it
is like? And the car, the apartment. I must be mad!" She laughed
like a little girl, with glistening excitement. Listening to the
details of her day, I realized I had learned almost to like this
woman. She had her own charm, vulnerable yet beguiling, and there
was a determined quality to her actions that revealed long-
considered thoughts and decisions. For the first time I realized
how unhappy she had been most of her life, and was suddenly willing
to forgive her foibles. She hasn't changed, I thought, I have. So
what if she drinks and flirts and lives with a buffoon? I drained
my glass and asked for more. She came and sat beside me.
"You know, Nicolas, you should come with us." Her head was half
turned toward me, and her eyes were far away. I liked her smell.
"I couldn't spoil your party," I said, laughing.
"There isn't one." Still the vacant gaze. She spread her fingers
slowly across my thigh. "Hasn't been one for years." She took a
little drink. "Look, you're going home for Easter, aren't you?" Her
nails dug in just a little.
I said I was.
"I'd like to come with you. Visit your family. My going-away visit.
And you can decide if you'd care to join us on our happy-ever-after
cruise." She swirled her wine and her hair fell partly over her
face. I thought of Mary swirling her milk glass when Sonya flirted
with our dad. And suddenly, as if in a kind of illumination, I knew
that this woman had slept with my father. The words were out before
I knew it: "Like father, like son?"
Her smile faded into a languid sneer as she drew a long fingernail
over my lips. And then we heard Vladimir on the stairs.
Forgiveness is ephemeral too, I thought, watching her greet her
husband at the door. "Vladimir! Guess what? Nicolas has invited me
to Montreal!"

Although the Montreal taxi driver had warts on the back of his neck and
protruding nose hairs, Sonya took great delight in flirting with
him, as she had with every available male on the flight. "I like
your hairy knuckles," she chortled, still high from the airline's
bar. "Reminds me of a vampire I once knew. He liked to ssssuck my
neck."
I smiled out at the grey streets and wondered how my parents would
react to Sonya Chernenko, half plastered, trying to seduce their
eldest son onto a sailboat cruise. More than anything, I was
looking forward to seeing Mary, who had astounded my parents by
studying flamenco dancing, archaeology and home economics, all in
the same term. She'd also befriended a mumbling philosopher named
Larry who, after coming face to face with his "true self," was now
seriously considering suicide. In long rambling letters Mary and I
had discussed Larry's angst, our parents, our brothers, the way
castanets made Mary horny, her fascination with the French painter
Henri Rousseau, and of course the Chernenko's sailboat. She called
my fascination with it "the white boat syndrome."
For the most part I'd rather forget the trip home. Sonya was an
embarrassment, and my father treated her like a child. On the
second day she left the dinner table, furious. It was obvious to
everyone that she wasn't inviting me on the voyage just to help
raise and lower the sails. At one point Mary asked if Sonya
intended to pick up more male crew along the way. "I understand
Tahitian men have great stamina," she said with a poker face.
"She needs help Nick," my father told me. "Don't go with them. I'll
talk to Vladimir. Has he been drinking too?"
The next morning, a contrite and apologetic Sonya appeared at
breakfast. Mary sat beside me eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal,
humming the theme song for "Hawaii Five-0." Her friend Larry had
dropped in and was staring fixedly at the tablecloth, ignoring my
parents' attempts at conversation. Larry had a bad complexion and
smelled like dill pickles. Sonya sat across from me and made a
little speech. Her drinking, she said, was due to her excitement
about getting ready to sail. All her life she'd been waiting for
this trip, it seemed. But her nerves weren't what they used to be.
She just needed to get out on the sea   get to know Vladimir again
  it would be like starting over. She was particularly regretful
about her behaviour toward me and said it wouldn't happen again.
There was a long silence broken only by Mary's jaws grinding the
Cap'n Crunch. A giant vase of spring flowers my mother had picked
sat on the kitchen table between Sonya and me. As I listened to her
lies, I watched her red lips through the petals. She had such a
beautiful mouth.
"Well," Sonya declared, "I need some fresh air. Do you think the
dog will walk with me?" This question was pointedly directed at my
father. Right on cue, he answered, "I'll come with you, Sonya, I
could use the exercise. I don't think Simon would listen to you,
would you, Simon?" Simon raised his head, not quite believing he
was going for a walk with anyone.
After they'd left, my mother grimly began the dishes, scrubbing
hard, occasionally glancing out the window. Then, with dripping
hands, she left the room.
"Are you crankin' her too, Nicolas?" Mary asked, matter-of-factly
pouring Coca-Cola on a new bowl of Cap'n Crunch.
"No."
"Oh Neecolass, you are so suave! Do you love all zee older weeemen
za vay you love me?"
"Shut up."
"Ohhh Bebeee, so strong!"
"What's that taste like?"
"Like zee nectar of love!"
"Hmmm, not bad."

On the plane trip back, I told Sonya I would not be going with them on
the sailboat, that I needed a summer job either to pay for my next
term or to travel on my own. Sonya accepted my explanation
serenely. She squeezed my hand and told me she felt twenty years
old. I wondered where the hell my father and her had gone for two
hours and why Simon didn't appear tired when they returned.
Vladimir was not at the arrival gate. The previous day, when Sonya
had phoned, his answering machine informed us that he would meet
our plane. We waited half an hour, and called a cab.
"He's gone, Nicolas," she said softly, as we pulled into traffic.
"He's taken the boat." I stared at her and told the driver to take
us to the harbour. There was nothing at the dock where the boat had
been moored, not even a note.
"Maybe he's taken it for a test cruise?" It was my turn to lie.
The taxi dropped us off in front of her house. She left me to pay
and went inside without a word. I walked home from there. For the
first time in my life, I felt sorry for Sonya Chernenko.

Several days later, feeling compelled to find an explanation, I called
at the little house in Chinatown. What had Vladimir been thinking
when he'd pulled the anchor? Did he have the gall to fly his wife's
dragon sail as he abandoned her and their plans? I kept thinking of
Kiera's hands, so lithe and concise. Maybe she would provide a
simple fatalistic explanation. An old fellow came to the door and
bowed politely.
"I've come to visit the ladies, Kiera and Kai. Are they home?"
"You friend?"
"Yes," I said, "a friend of Vladimir's, the man who had the dragon
sewn."
"Dragon?" he exclaimed, his face clouding, "You go, you no friend."
"I don't understand."
"You go now!" He pointed to the street. "Your friend who take my
daughters! You no friend! Police come for you! You go now! I call
police!"
I saw everything: the dragon sail, the two sisters laughing,
Vladimir at the helm of the white boat, grinning, the ocean
swelling under their treachery.

Days later the truth emerged: Vladimir had sailed north. I suppose it
was a feeble attempt to hide from the coast guard. Everyone would
have expected him to go west or south.
The boat was never found, and neither were Kiera and Kai.
Vladimir's body, curled like a sleeping child, was retrieved from
a rubber dingy. The newspapers were full of the story   a Hollywood
plot come true, they said. Where was the boat? Who were the mystery
women? Rumours of drug smuggling and murder ensued. Photographs of
Sonya Chernenko became hot items. Mary phoned me daily for the
latest scoop.
I didn't see Sonya again until the day before Vladimir's funeral.
Poised in my doorway, she held sketches of a new sailboat under her
arm. Her sunglasses were like flat insect eyes.
"May I come in?" said the beautiful mouth.
She spread her drawings on the table and removed the glasses.
"Drinks?" she smiled, raising her eyebrows. I mixed two vodkas and
orange. She watched with that same distracted gaze, lips parted,
head half turned, a strand of hair dangling.
"Do you know, Nicolas, that in China parents try to have their
children born in the Year of the Dragon?" She had a refreshed,
happy look that was absolutely false.
"A powerful year. My sister was born that year."
We both smiled.
"To dragons," said Sonya.
"To dragons," I answered, thinking of Mary.
Then Sonya told me that Vladimir had a "splendid" life insurance
policy, and in the same breath asked if I liked her sketches of the
new boat. I nodded.
A dazzling white boat on a blue ocean. I poured two more drinks,
wondering if I should tell her how important this image was to me.
In the end I decided to keep it to myself, close to my heart.
The next morning I packed a suitcase and called a cab. I wavered a
moment when it pulled up, then ordered the driver to the airport.
At about the time the funeral was to begin, I boarded a plane to
Montreal.

The Accident
Colleen Davey

The sun beat through the open roof, searing her bare thighs and slicking
the back of her neck with sweat. She drove quickly, hands tight on
the steering wheel, body tense. The wind whipped her hair around
her face.
The boy sat beside her, fine-boned hands clasping his Walkman,
headphones in his ears: Joel, her son, lost in his music and his
private adolescent world.
Mark would be at the cottage by now. He had gone on ahead   she and
Joel should come out when they were ready. She knew that he had
wanted to get there first to check the place, to make sure that no
lipstick-rimmed glass had been left on the coffee table, that no
earring lay forgotten on the bedroom floor. Don't worry about it,
it doesn't matter anymore, she had wanted to say, but she had said
nothing. It was easier that way.
She let up on the gas pedal. A half mile ahead flashing lights
wavered in the heat rising from the pavement. Two police cars faced
one another across the highway. As she rolled to a stop an officer
approached.
"You'll have to take the alternate route, ma'am," he told her.
"There's an accident a couple of miles up."
Joel had slipped off his headphones. His dark hair stood up in
licks. "Must be pretty bad," he said. She could only nod.
She turned off the highway onto the road that would take them past
the accident. A prickling ran across her cheekbones and the backs
of her hands. In her mind she could see, as clearly as if looking
at a photograph, Mark's black Audi crumpled and broken on the
highway. She squeezed her eyes shut to dispel the image but the
fear stayed with her, lodged beneath her breastbone.
Joel went back to his music. Accidents were something that happened
to other people. He was right, of course; hundreds of cars
travelled that stretch of highway every hour. There was no reason
to think that Mark was involved.
She had forgotten how narrow and winding the lakeshore road was. A
hundred years ago, when she and Mark were young, they had raced
through these corners in their old MGB, top down, sun on their
shoulders, wind in their faces. Mark's hair was long then, he wore
blue jeans instead of suits, and he smiled a lot. They had explored
the rutted dirt roads that led down to Lake Superior's rocky shore,
had picnicked on the stone beaches and lain in the sun on
lichen-crusted rocks. They had taken pleasure in each other's
company then   at least that was how she remembered it. Perhaps
that too had been a lie.
A pulp truck crawled along in front of them. There would be no
chance of passing it until they joined the highway again. She
drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Come on come on come
on," she urged. She dreaded driving behind these log-hauling
behemoths; some part of her was always sure that at any moment the
load was going to come smashing through her windshield. She lifted
the hair off the back of her neck and expelled her breath through
clenched teeth. It was too damn hot for this.
In the overgrown grass at the side of the road sat a small white
building, its paint peeling, its windows boarded. She reached over
to touch Joel's wrist. "That's the old Frosty Freeze," she told
him. "Your dad and I used to stop there for ice cream when we were
out driving."
"Dad who?" Joel grinned.
"Seriously. We used to go out for ice cream all the time. And milk
shakes. Especially milk shakes. When we lived in that dumpy little
apartment on Banning Street   you know the one I told you about
that was always so hot   we'd sometimes get up in the middle of the
night and drive around looking for a place to get a milk shake.
Then we'd go sit in the park, in the dark, and drink them and talk.
We could talk for hours back then."
Joel looked at her for a moment. "I remember this time when I was
little you talked him into taking us to the Marina for ice cream.
I guess you were trying to do some kind of family-time thing. When
we got there he said he was just going to wait for us in the car.
It was about a million degrees but he just stayed in the car and
got sweaty and mad. Then he took us home and went out somewhere."
She remembered that day. She wished that Joel didn't. She wished he
could remember only the good times. The times when they felt had
like a family.
They rounded the corner that took them back to the highway. A
police officer leaned, arms crossed, against the door of his patrol
car. She glanced past him but she could not see the accident.
She accelerated sharply and moved past the pulp truck. The wind
felt good against her skin. Joel raised his face to it and smiled.
The highway lay straight and empty in front of them. She wished
they could drive forever.
She switched on the radio and the car filled with music. Beside
them Lake Superior moved tantalizingly in and out of view. They
crested a hill and as they neared Morrow's Esso Station she slowed
and turned onto the gravel road that would take them to the
cottage.
Gravel splattered against the undercarriage and dust rose in
billows from the back tires. At each fork the trees were littered
with multi-coloured wooden rectangles bearing the names of cottage
owners. Other signs, some hand-lettered, some carved into polished
ovals of cedar or pine, marked each of the long steep driveways
that led down to the cottages. Koivu, Johnston, Paquette, Rissanen,
Martin. When Joel was younger he recited the names as they drove
along, an incantation to speed the trip. She suspected he still did
it, silently now.
"Stop so I can see if Mike's there," Joel said, leaning forward to
peer past her. They could see the Tompkin's green station wagon
parked at the bottom of their road. "I'll see you later, okay?" he
said as he pushed the car door open.
She drove the rest of the way slowly. The road was narrower now and
deeply rutted. She parked the car at the top of their hill. She got
out and stood for a moment, leaning against the hood, looking down
at the cottage. Mark's car, dust-covered, trunk agape, sat near the
back door. It had been ridiculous to think he'd been in that
accident, even more so to think he'd been killed. Mark was a
reckless driver, fast and aggressive, but he never got hurt. She
dropped the car keys on the seat and slammed the door. She walked
down the hill, wrapped in an overwhelming lethargy.
Mark had not heard her arrive. She watched as he forced the lawn
mower through the thick grass. Gravel thwacked the blades each time
he went off the lawn. His body was rigid, his movements tight and
jerky. A dark triangle of sweat stained the back of his T-shirt.
She raised her hand as he turned toward her.
"Where's Joel," he yelled over the mower's roar.
"At the Tompkins'."
Mark adjusted the throttle. The noise dimmed. He pushed his hands
through his hair, clenched and unclenched his jaw. "For Christ's
sake, he should be here. He's big enough to give me a hand once in
a while."
She knew what would come next: how she coddled Joel, how she had
turned him into a wimp. Joel's here every weekend, you're the one
who's never around, she wanted to say. She turned away, the
unspoken words like shards of glass in her throat.
She walked across the lawn toward the lake and climbed onto the
dock. The water was calm. The horizon disappeared into a colourless
sky. Across the bay, gulls floated on the smooth surface,
motionless daubs of white. The heat pressed down on her. Her skin
felt gritty and sore. She slipped off her sandals and dove into the
water. Her body parted her reflection and sent it rippling toward
shore. She moved deep through the aching cold until the pain in her
lungs forced her to the surface. A diving raft lay anchored in the
middle of the bay. A few dozen strong strokes took her to it.
She lay on the sun-bleached canvas, chest heaving, breath coming in
gasps. Her wet clothes clung to her body; beneath her the water
slapped and slurped against the empty oil drums. The sun was a
black dot behind the amber glow of her eyelids. She listened to the
lawn mower's whine drifting across the water. She willed him to
come to her, to emerge dripping and cleansed from the frigid water.
She wanted to feel his hands on her skin, feel his body on her
body. She wanted to look into his face and know who he was. She
thought again about the fear she had felt when she heard about the
accident. She was surprised by it and thankful for it; she had
thought herself beyond caring.
She propped herself up on her elbows. Mark was chopping wood now;
she could almost feel the anger that was always a part of him as
the axe flashed through the air and into the dead birch. "I want a
divorce," she said aloud into the still air. She lay back and
closed her eyes. Above her, the gulls swooped and cried.

She did not tell him right away. She held the certainty within herself,
testing it, feeding off it. She felt changed and thought that
surely Mark would notice, but he did not. Every morning she woke
planning to tell him. Every day she gave herself permission to wait
a little longer.
She was standing in the kitchen on the Thursday of the following
week. Cooking bacon. She hated bacon. Hated cooking it, hated
eating it, hated touching the raw strips, limp and clammy against
her fingers. The kitchen was stifling. The element's glow scorched
her face. She could feel the sweat collecting around her waist and
beneath her breasts. She thought longingly of the cottage and
wished she were there.
Mark sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, waiting for
his supper. His regular Thursday night bacon and eggs and toast.
Joel was spending the night at his friend Kevin's house. Kevin had
a pool.
She added a strip of bacon to the ones sizzling in the pan. The fat
erupted, speckling her hands and her bare forearms.        "Damn!"
The fork clattered against the stove top. Tears filled her eyes.
"Burn yourself?" Mark asked.
She shook her head. Her throat ached. She clutched the sides of the
stove.
"Then what's the matter with you?"
"I want a divorce."
The whispered words hung in the air. She wished she could snatch
them back. She switched off the stove then turned slowly to face
him, pressing her fingers to her mouth.
"What are you talking about?" His hands clutched the edges of the
open newspaper, crumpling them.
"I think we should get a divorce."
"Jesus," he muttered. They stared at each other. The only sound in
the room was the crackling from the frying pan.
"Who have you been talking to? Because if..."
"No, Mark, it's not about that." She raised her hand to stop him
from speaking. Her legs were trembling. She didn't know how long
they would hold her. "And it's not about how much time you spend
working or how often you go out or any of that stuff. It's about
us, it's about...God, I don't know what to say to you."
"You're being ridiculous. Why don't you lie down or take a shower
or something." He picked up the newspaper and began to read again.
"We have to talk about it." The trembling was beginning to spread
through her body. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself,
trying to contain it. "Mark..." she began but he did not look up.
She watched him read. Or pretend to read. She didn't know which.
The sound of his breathing, loud and harsh, the rustling of the
paper as he turned the pages, seemed to pummel her brain. She
turned back to the stove and looked at the frying pan, the grease
congealing around the half-cooked bacon, the open carton of eggs,
the bread stacked beside the toaster, the jar of fine-cut English
marmalade.
She pulled the garbage can from its place beneath the sink.
Carrying it in one hand, she moved quickly around the room. She
dropped the eggs into the plastic container   the bread, the
marmalade, the frying pan.
Mark was staring at her. "For Christ's sake, what do you think
you're doing?"
She pushed Mark's plate and his knife and his fork down deep into
the bag beside the grease-soaked food. She wiped her hands on a
dish towel and dropped it on top. She put the overflowing can back
in the cupboard and kicked the door shut with the side of her foot.
His chair scraped the floor as he stood up. "You're crazy, do you
know that?"
She grabbed her keys from the rack on the wall beside the
refrigerator. "We are getting a divorce, Mark. I suggest you start
making plans," she said as she went through the door.
The car was hot. She opened the sun roof and the windows to let in
the evening air. She'd sleep at the cottage tonight. Tomorrow she
would look for a new place to live.
She started up the highway. Wind filled the car. It felt good
against the flushed skin of her face. She settled back in the seat
and pressed down on the accelerator. In front of her, the road lay
empty and straight.

Turn-Table
(an abridged excerpt from the novel I Don't Like What's Happening
to MY SISTER)
Joan Skelton

                                I

The dog? Where is it? You mean she. My daughter Clarissa's going to
look after her while I'm away. Ya, have to be away for a couple a
days. Going to the remote North with the fly-in court. Gotta do
something. Don't believe in getting paid and not doing anything.
Unusual for a District Court judge to go. Usually it's the
Provincial Court judges that go.
Manley, ya, Judge Edward Manley, was in to see me today. Much as he
gets under my skin a lotta time, I have to feel sorry for him now.
Funny feeling to see a sparring partner so disarmed. Never thought
I'd think: poor guy.
I have to admit, though, it's a bit like seeing your enemy
disappearing in quicksand. First you exult. Then you feel guilty
about exulting. Ambivalence.  But I really do feel sorry for him.
Pity, the ultimate superiority, of course.
Right now, he's got nerves like crawling worms.
None of his ad nauseam quotes seem to fit the situation, so he
doesn't know what to say. Ya, he's the judge that everybody marvels
about because of the encyclopedia of quotations he carries around
in his head. "'I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race.'"
Spare me. How many times have I heard it?
Ya, the experience of being sexually assaulted almost killed him.
Not physically. Emotionally. Now the trial's killing him, the trial
of that Heatherington woman, Stephanie Heatherington. Like a lot of
witnesses, he feels like he's the one on trial. Not unusual in
sexual assault. Not unusual in a lotta trials because a witness
feels as if it's their story that's on trial, its their story
that's going to be judged guilty or not guilty. Doesn't seem to
matter whether or not they are the accused or the complainant, the
person who-done-it, or the person who-it-was-done-to. If a guy is
judged not guilty of sexual assault, then the woman feels like she
is guilty, as if it was she who asked for it. You bet, the system
fosters this feeling in sexual assault. Seeing Ed today, there's no
doubt that if Stephanie Heatherington gets off, he'll feel
disbelieved, discredited. Of course, no one would ever believe he
was compliant or a party to what went on, not like they might with
a woman. Besides, Heatherington's lawyer wouldn't have the balls
ah, a difficult expression involving a female   ah, she wouldn't
have the guts to raise complicity when it's a man, especially a
judge, although I understand she's trying to imply it. Saying
things like "alleged" crime.
Ya, it probably would be raised if it was a woman, despite the
improbability of it, the brutality and perverseness of it. If
you've ever seen any pornography   I have on obscenity trials
some of that stuff makes you want to vomit   anyway, in pornography
women supposedly like being knocked around and brutalized. So,
compliancy can be raised often in brutal rape.
Manley was sitting in my Chambers when I came back from court, just
sitting there, staring at the icebreaker making a channel for a
lake freighter through the pack ice in the harbour. He wasn't
watching it. He was just sitting there staring into himself. He
didn't even hear me come in.
There he sat, frozen, a dapper, sort of Charlie Chaplin, little
man, receding, slicked back, black hair, greying sideburns. Some
time ago, I made the mistake of kidding him that he should buy
himself a boler hat and spats.
"'It's not only fine feathers that makes fine birds,' Aesop," he
says. "Besides, 'Trust not the heart of that man for whom old
clothes are not venerable.'"
The quotation didn't really fit, but you could see his mind sorting
through the quotations on clothes.
With my old clothes, you sure must be able to trust my heart. Look
at them. Clara was always bugging me about them. Clara's my wife.
Oh, I'm impeccable around the courthouse. Dare I be anything else
after my chastisement of the lawyers? But off duty, it's different.
I love this sweater, even if it does have holes in the elbows.
Today, Manley's confident voice with its little lisp, well, it sort
of quavered like the bawling of a baby moose. No more The Man as
the lawyers had nicknamed him.
"Everyone knows my shame, Jeffrey."
"Jeezus, Edward," I said. He doesn't like to be called Ed. I call
him Ed, though, just to get under his skin. Not now. He's a wounded
duck now.
"You're bloody lucky the press has been restrained on printing
names. It would have had a field day. But now, nobody knows it's
you."
Sure, I agree with justifiable restrictions on freedom of
expression. Even The Charter recognizes the necessity.
Before the law had been changed, the names of both victim and
accused could be released, even at the preliminary trial. Yet,
despite the publication ban, the courtroom was full. Not because of
the luridity of sexual assault. Sexual assaults are routine now.
Too routine. Jeez, I don't even know if luridity's a word. Sounds
good, though.
"Of course, Jeffrey," he says in his precise sort of way, "I
appreciate the change in the law. But there is the gossip, the
pipeline that I know has carried the story throughout the whole
network of both the judiciary and my friends, few that I have. 'Who
steals my purse, steals trash; but he that filches from me my good
name...makes me poor indeed.' Everyone knows my shame."
"Ed, Edward, you did nothing wrong. It wasn't your fault. It's not
your shame. Your good name has not been damaged," I told him.
Hasn't it? What do people think about women who are raped?
He knows. In fact, he said, "How many times have I blamed a woman
for being in the location where her rapist was? There I was in the
parking lot late at night."
"Come on, now, Edward. You were just doing your job. Had there been
better security, it wouldn't have happened."
"How can I sit through any more of that trial and hear any more of
the grisly details of my assault? How can I testify? How can I go
through it all, experience it all again? How can I do it in front
of strangers, strangers that don't even care? I don't know if I can
do it, Jeffrey. I just don't know if I can do it. Even though for
the twelve years I have been watching people having their lives
torn open in front of me, now that I am about to have my entrails
exposed, I just don't know if I can. There is an Ojibwa saying,
'Only he who walks in my moccasins...' I just never realized..."
You know, that controlled, quotation-spouting, dapper little man
broke. This person who used to rub me raw with his endless
recitations just broke apart there in front of me. He flopped his
head down into his hands and sat   who knows for how long?   his
head bowed, only his shoulders giving an occasional quiver.
Bloody hard on him. Firstly, the limbo of the delay. No. No backlog
in trials here. But, with Manley being a judge, there was
difficulty finding another judge who didn't know him. You know the
saying: 'Justice must not only be done, it must appear to be done.'
That's why I wonder how a judge can sit where he practised as a
lawyer. Anyway, Mr. Justice Dob‚ Streeter was found. The opposite
to me in demeanour. Polite. Restrained. Impeccable clothes. Looks
'every inch a judge' in and outside the courtroom. Even when he
gets into the martinis.
What will Heatherington's defense be? Ya, she pleaded "not guilty."
Her defense will be mistaken identity. She claims she wasn't there
at all, that she was working at her office. However, there's
something about a sticker crazy-glued to, oh god, poor Ed, it was
crazy-glued to his cheek, I should say his buttock, his ass. It had
the name of a women's group on it, and because Heatherington's
president she became the prime suspect.
How did my day go? My custody action was knocked off 'the list' by
the lack of courtrooms. Nobody's fault, a trial simply went longer
than expected. No courtrooms to spare. So the Supreme Court judge
that comes up from Toronto naturally has precedence. So I do my job
as a puisne judge. A "puny" judge, as we all joke. Ironically, of
course, because the power, as the kids say, is awesome, both in the
lives of individuals and in society. What do I mean by puisne? It
was defined by an Act in 1877 as any judge other than a Senior
Judge, Lord High Chancellor, etc. Puisne, but not puny in the grand
scheme of justice. That word, again. Justice!
Good job. Sure I like it. Like practising law without clients. And,
I love the law. The courthouse is sort of like a happy family. The
bureaucrats have only just begun to screw us up. No doubt they'll
do a number on us once they get control of the doctors.
So I finished a judgement and said I would go tomorrow on the fly-
in court up to Pikanjikum north of Kenora. Ya, special sittings of
the court for the natives on the reserves. The Provincial Court
judge who was supposed to go got sick and just by chance I got wind
of it and offered to go. District Court judges don't usually go.
But I don't mind.
No, the roughness doesn't bother me. Two rules in travelling in the
remote North: never get separated from your sleeping bag; and never
pass up a clean washroom. Ya, we take our own food. No booze. The
reserves are dry. What a laugh. Of course, they're not. But, what
an example if the white court broke reserve regulations. You take
longjohns. Longjohns? Long underwear. Heavy socks, and a down
parka. The judge and court officials sleep in the Provincial Police
station, sometimes in the nursing station. Court's usually held in
a schoolroom. Ya, it's cold. And bleak. Little frame houses tied
together by lines of frozen laundry. Television antennae or
satellite dishes their, our? religious icon.
We, the court, really the system, gets criticized all the time for
its treatment of natives, for its harsh, its supposed racist
treatment of natives. Yet, if people, if the media, only knew, or
took the trouble to find out. You see, we, the judges, we can't
explain, we can't defend ourselves. But it's ironic. The unwritten
criticism we hear, apart from the politically correct stereotypes
of the media, is not that we're harsh or insensitive or racist,
it's that we're too soft, that we practise reverse discrimination,
that we give special treatment to natives. When you think of it,
though, special treatment can never be equality.
I fly in tomorrow morning on one of those little planes, probably
an eight-seater Piper-Navajo.
I just hope Manley's going to able to stand up to the trial. Court
yesterday and today was nothing. The jury empanelled. Counsel and
the Crown delivering their opening remarks. That was pretty well
it. A couple of witnesses called. Just wait until he has to
testify, testify facing a courtroom packed like a Japanese subway
train. He could be on the stand for days. He's the main witness.
The trial is scheduled for two weeks.

                                II

"State your occupation, please."
"I am a District Court judge for the District of Thunder Bay."
"How long have you been on the Bench?"
"I was appointed on September 15, l970. I will have been on the
Bench fifteen years this coming September."
"Thank you."
"Are you married?"
"Yes."
"Do you have any children?"
"No."
"Why were you in the parking lot of the District Courthouse on
Camelot Street the night of November 28, 1984?"
"I had been working on a judgement in the courthouse."
"Is the young woman present in the courtroom that participated in
the aggravated sexual assault on you on that night of November 28,
1984?"
"Allegedly participated, M'Lord."
"Quite correct, Ms. Steele. Mister Renard? You stand corrected."
"Yes, M'Lord. Mr. Manley, is the young woman here?"
"Yes, she is."
"Would you point her out?"
"That woman. The young woman in the prisoner's dock."
"Let the record show that Judge Manley pointed toward the accused,
Stephanie Heatherington."
"Objection, M'Lord. I thought it was agreed that Edward Manley
would be accorded no special title..."
"Uh, my apologies to the Court, M'Lord. Judge Manley will be Mister
Manley and..."
"Please get on with it, Mr. Renard."
"Certainly, M'Lord. Is the young woman in the courtroom that you
picked out of the police line-up about midnight on the night of
November 28?"
"Yes. That same woman. The woman in the prisoner's dock."
"Let the record show that Mr. Manley pointed toward the accused,
Stephanie Heatherington."
"Why are you so certain it was Stephanie Heatherington?"
"The details of that night, along with her face, are engraved on my
memory forever."
"Thank you. Now, Mr. Manley, in your own words, tell me what
happened when you left the courthouse."
"It was about nine o'clock. I often work late but I was tired and
not thinking particularly effectively and therefore decided to
return to my home. 'The night cometh, when no man can work.'"
"Excuse me, Mr. Manley. What was that last sentence?"
"Uh...Sorry, Your Lordship. I like to use quotations, a habit of
mine. 'The night cometh, when no man can work.'"
"Yes. Yes. Proceed."
"What happened when you left the courthouse?"
"I came out of the door..."
"What door?"
"The door at the south end of the building."
"Thank you. Continue."
"I walked down the short flight of limestone steps and was about to
step onto the pavement when these dark figures jumped out of the
darkness. One pinned my arms behind me and tied them with an
incredibly adept, strong movement. Another tied something across my
mouth. It was done in seconds."
"Then?"
"They shuffled me around the corner of the steps and across the
lawn in front of the courthouse. They pushed me behind some
ornamental bushes that are on the lawn near the front door. I
caught the features of Stephanie Heatherington just as we rounded
the corner of the courthouse. She stumbled and the scarf over her
face dropped below her mouth. There was an angry, aggressive snarl
on her face, not the pretty face we see today."
"Yes?"
"I could see, too, that she was carrying something."
"In other words, you got a good look at her face."
"Yes."
"Did you get a good look at what she was carrying?"
"I could tell it was not a gun. At the time, I remember registering
some relief that it was not a gun. Maybe it would have been better
if it was a gun."
"What happened next?"
"They opened my topcoat...Oh..."
"Mr. Manley?"
"They..."
"Mr. Manley, perhaps if you sit up straight and take a deep
breath."
"Everyone knows my shame."
"Would you speak up, please?"
"What happened next?"
"Uh...Could I have a sip of water? Thank you."
"Continue, please."
"They undid the button and zipper of my pants. They pulled down my
pants and my underwear."
"Yes. Now we can hear."
"'Get on your knees,' one of them said in a gruff, distorted voice.
Although she tried to disguise her voice I could tell it was a
woman. It was the first time I really realized they were women."
"How many were there?"
"Three."
"What happened next?"
"I got on my knees..."
"Pardon?"
"Everyone knows my shame."
"Sir. It's not your fault, not your shame."
"Oh, how often has a raped woman been blamed, shamed..."
"Mr. Manley, please continue..."
"You were on your knees."
"I was told to lean forward on my elbows. I wasn't quite sure what
they wanted and when I didn't immediately comply, one of them
pushed me forward, my face hitting the grass quite hard. You see my
hands were tied behind my back."
"Yes. Continue."
"I heard some whispering and someone say, 'Be careful.'"
"Yes?"
"In front of all these people? These strangers? My entrails open to
view...I can't. I can't."
"Mr. Manley, please lift your head and speak up."
"Tell us what happened next."
"Then my buttocks, oh, they were parted, a pole of some sort was
pushed, pushed into...into my seat, into my anus and rectum. It was
pushed in and out several times. As they did so, one of them said
in a disguised voice, sort of like a growl: 'This is rape, Judge.
Rape. Thought you oughta know what it felt like.'
"'Turn-table. Turn-table.'
"'Ya.'
"'Turn-table. Turn-table.'
"They kept saying 'turn-table, turn-table,' almost like a chant.
"The woman said: 'Now maybe he won't send a woman to jail for
shooting her rapist.'
"They must have been talking about the Mare case. I sentenced
Theresa Mare to two years less a day for shooting her rapist in the
legs..."
"Just tell us what happened that night, Mr. Manley."
"Apparently, I gave her the same sentence the rapist received in
another court. I was only doing my job...according to
precedents...according..."
"Please continue with what happened."
"They kept on pushing the thing in and out and chanting 'turn-
table, turn-table.' Then the woman who did most of the talking
said, again in a growly kind of voice, 'Now, stay there and don't
get up.'
"I could hear the chanting, 'turn-table, turn-table,' disappearing
into almost a whisper. Then I heard a car leave. It may or may not
have been them. I waited a few minutes and then I struggled to my
feet. My pants were down around my ankles, my hands bound, my mouth
gagged. Somehow I managed to make my way across the parking lot and
through the fence to the Emergency of St. Joseph's Hospital which
is right beside the courthouse."
"Apart from your injuries which were described yesterday, please
tell the Court what was glued to your buttock."
"It was a yellow stickum glued on to me with some sort of special
glue. It had WAHM hand-printed on it. It was an acronym from some
organization. What is it? Women Against Harmful Media? Something
like that. The stickum had to be cut off and even after a solvent
was used to remove the residue, it all wouldn't come off for maybe
a month."
"Mr. Manley, tell the Court how this assault affected you?"
"I was terribly sore for maybe two weeks. I still bleed when I have
a bowel movement."
"Tell the Court how it affected you, well, emotionally."
"Badly. Very badly. It made me lose my confidence. I couldn't work
for more than a month. I actually think I will never be the same."
"Could you expand on that last thought a little, please? What do
you mean you don't think you will ever be the same?"
"To be the object of brute force, to literally be an object where
no one cares what you are, pushed and shoved and talked about as if
you are not a person, an object of brutal anger."
"Yes?"
"To have something go into you, to have something go into your
body, invade your body, something maybe dirty and horrible going
inside of you...
"Nietzsche said, he said something like... what was it? I can't
remember. The strain. Oh, yes, 'That which does not kill you, makes
you stronger?' I don't know, Your Lordship. I may have been killed.
. .I am definitely not stronger. . .everyone knows my shame... 'I
am a man more sinned against than sinning.' I was just doing my
job. . .the sentences. . .I was only following the law. . .thinking
about the Court of Appeal. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"
"Mr. Manley?"
"Maybe I didn't 'Expose myself to feel what wretches feel,' but I
am 'a robed man of Justice,' am I not? Oh, Lear, Oh, Lear, your
agony is mine...everyone knows my shame."
"Mr. Manley?"
"I was just coming out of the courthouse at night, nothing more.
Yet how often have I blamed a woman for being where she was when
she was raped? My shame..."
"M'Lord? Perhaps a short recess?"
"Yes. Yes. I can certainly see that is necessary."
"Thank you, Mr Manley. You may step down."
"'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods...'"
"Over here, sir. This way."
"All rise."

                             *  *  *

"Proceed with your cross-examination, Ms. Steele."
"Yes, Your Lordship. Mr. Manley, you said when one of your captors
said, 'Get on your knees,' it was the first time you realized you
were involved with women, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Your captor said, 'Get on your knees' over near the bushes where
the alleged assault took place?"
"Objection, M'Lord. This was no 'alleged' assault. We have medical
evidence..."
"Your Lordship, my learned friend has no evidence whatsoever to
show that Mr. Manley's medical problems were caused by someone
else."
"Ms. Steele is right, Mr. Renard."
"Your captor said, 'Get on your knees' over near the bushes where
the alleged assault took place, is that right?"
"Yes."
"In other words, when you first saw the person of Stephanie
Heatherington you did not realize it was a woman?"
"Well, no, I thought I was being attacked by boys. I had just
sentenced three young offenders for break and entry and..."
"Thank you. Would you please look at Mrs. Heatherington. Does she
look like a boy?"
"No."
"Thank you.
"Now, you said you heard one woman speak and you knew for the first
time you were involved with women, is that right?"
"Yes."
"How did you know the other two were women? Did you hear them
speak?"
"Well, no. Except for the chanting."
"In other words, you surmised they were women."
"Well..."
"You surmised they were women, yes or no."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"M'Lord, I produce a weather report from Environment Canada for the
night of November 28, 1984, stating there was heavy cloud cover. I
also produce the supporting affidavit required under the Canada
Evidence Act."
"Defence Exhibit Two."
"Mr. Manley, in the light of the facts that it was a dark night,
that the closest light was forty feet behind you and the amber
lights by the courthouse front door were sixty feet away and out,
tell me how well you could see the face of Mrs. Heatherington?"
"I could see it well."
"Could you see the colour of her lipstick when her scarf fell?
Remember now, did the colour of her lipstick register on your
mind?"
"No, but..."
"Do you know the colour of her eyes?"
"Uh..."
"Mrs. Heatherington, let me see the colour of your eyes. Yes, they
are black. Note, I am standing about three feet away from her.  You
were even closer, were you not, Mr. Manley?"
"Yes."
"Yet, you could not tell the colour of her eyes?"
"I just didn't notice the colour of her eyes."
"That's fine, you didn't notice the colour of her eyes, yet you
still felt you could pick her out of the line-up?"
"Yes."
"Did you know the light bulbs were burned out on the night of the
alleged assault? Both lights on the courthouse were non functus?"
"No, I didn't realize it."
"Then, why, why do you feel the woman you picked out of the line-up
was one of the women that allegedly assaulted you?"
"Her hair is sort of browny-black... Her face just looks the same,
that's all."
"You can't say why it looks the same?"
"No."
"Mr. Manley, do you feel angry about being sexually assaulted?"
"Yes. I do."
"Would you like to see the person brought to justice that did this
to you?"
"Yes, I would."
"Thank you. No more questions."
"Do you wish to re-examine, Mr. Renard?"
"Yes, M'Lord. Mr. Manley, why did you pick Stephanie Heatherington
out of the line-up?"
"What? M'Lord, I have to object. This matter has been covered."
"M'Lord. I did not precisely ask this question."
"According to my notes, he said..."
"Ms. Steele, a little latitude, please."
"Answer the question, please, Mr. Manley."
"I picked her out because I am certain she was one of the women
involved in the attack."
"You are absolutely certain."
"Yes, I am."
"How many times is this going to be asked?"
"Ms. Steele..."
"Thank you, M'Lord. My re-examination is concluded."
"Thank you, Mr. Renard."
"M'Lord?"
"Yes, Ms. Steele?"
"I would like to request a voir dire."
"On what basis, Ms. Steele?"
"To determine whether certain evidence pertaining to the sexual
conduct of the accused as set out in Section 246.6 (1) of the
Criminal Code of Canada would be permitted."
"What? I object, M'Lord. Judge...ah, Mr. Manley's sexual conduct is
not in question. It is ludicrous to even consider..."
"Mr. Renard opened the door, M'Lord. He asked if Mr. Manley was
married..."
"Is the institution of marriage regarded as evidence of sexual
conduct, M'Lord?"
"Surely my learned friend asked this question in order to show a
certain virtue..."
"In today's age, M'Lord?"
"There's no doubt sexual conduct would be raised if it was a woman,
would it not?"
"Very well, Ms. Steele. A little latitude on your part, Mr. Renard.
Although I don't know where this can possibly lead, I'll grant the
voir dire. The jury will retire."
"The jury will retire."

                               III

Splats! That Deborah Steele! Jeez! She'll never be able to appear
what a woman   in front of Manley again!
The courthouse gossip says she actually implied in her cross-
examination of the investigating police officer that Judge Manley
might have been a party to the sexual assault! That he actually
might've consented! She kept saying "allege." The "alleged
assault." Then she actually implied   preposterous   he might have
done it to himself!
And what prospecting! Ya, such innuendo...typical criminal
lawyer...just like kids who are like water seeking out the weak
spots to spring through, the openings, the weaknesses in the dike.
Just like kids. If given a chance, they'll be late, won't dress
properly, they'll try to do what they want, despite the rules.
Just like kids. Sure I've adjourned because of bad dress. Sure I've
adjourned because a lawyer is late, maybe even thrown out the
action or assessed extra costs if he dawdles in keeping the Court
waiting. There has to be respect for the system. What's the
alternative? Anarchy?
Oh sure, allegations of consent would be made regarding a woman.
Sure. As far as a sexually assaulted woman is concerned the defense
lawyer'd try to create a reasonable doubt by suggesting consent, by
suggesting the woman implied she went along with the intercourse.
But somehow with a man? A judge? Get off it.
Then she, she! that woman lawyer, she tries to get in evidence
about his sex life? Come on. I haven't found out, not yet, whether
she was successful. I'll find out. I'll say one thing though: that
woman has balls. I said that before?
No matter, she sure lives up to the bumper sticker on her car: THE
BEST MAN FOR THE JOB IS A WOMAN.
Regarding the line-up evidence, I told Judge Streeter not to allow
it. "I'll tell you now, she's going to appeal it under The Charter.
You'll see," I told him. I probably even shook my finger at him,
like Clara always said I did, but I never paid attention.  With all
The Charter appeals, no wonder a backlog's developing.
She, the young woman, the accused   what's her name? Stephanie
Heatherington   didn't even have her lawyer present at the time of
the line-up. She was clearly conscripted to give evidence against
herself. No counsel of her choice present. Evidence clearly
obtained by an infringement of her rights under The Charter.
"Inadmissible," I said. Judge Streeter'll see I'm right when the
appeal is heard.
"I told you so."
"I told you so."
I can hear her. Clara, I mean. She always nagged me for saying it.
There's nothing more alienating than being right, she used to say.
She should know. An ironic thought for she who is always right. Ya,
that's the way I perceived her.
Let's get off the subject of my wife.
The fly-in court. The remote North.
Got to unpack while we talk.
It was a grizzle of a blizzard. A  bloody white-out. That doesn't
sound right. The cross-wind tilting the Cessna, the second plane we
took, from side-to-side like a wheeling gull. Billie, a.k.a. Beaver
Belly, the native pilot, searching for markers that were trees he'd
planted in the ice. The stall signal buzzing, he fiddling under the
seat to adjust the landing flaps, suddenly the frozen lake coming
up toward us. What happens? Billie touches down like a feather.
Soft for just a second, though. As he taxies, the plane is almost
shaken apart by the ridges of the wind-pressed snow. Kee-ryst. What
an experience!
"I've diced with death again. And won," Renard said in a sort of
whine, his fingers in his braces, his bulging belly spreading his
plaid shirt open between the buttons, his heavy red undershirt
showing. The sentence was punctuated by an exaggerated shrug of one
shoulder, a quick sideward thrust of the jaw, and a nose sniff.
Probably mild Tourette's Syndrome, but nobody holds it against him,
or even talks about it. No, it never happens in court. So, with the
Heatherington trial adjourned, something about calling surprise
witnesses, he said he'd go as Crown. Despite his tic and his dress,
or because of them, he's an effective man. Goes over well with the
natives. And, with politicians. They probably expect such of
northerners. My style is like a sledgehammer compared to his. His?
A cotton-balled stiletto.
Not the first time he'd "diced with death." And won. Think. The
Crown is the guy who really goes after the accused. The Crown is
the guy the accused gets mad at. Ya, the Crown and the judge. Only
last week some guy was going around saying: "I'll kill de fuckin'
judge." Took fifteen minutes to get the police there. Bloody bad,
no protection in the courtroom. Just those nice, unarmed senior
citizens as guards.
It was Renard's kind of game he played at the Heatherington trial,
stumbling, ha, stumbling over Judge, er, Mr. Manley's name. Right
away the jury knew that the complainant had maximum credibility;
after all, he was a judge. Right away the jury knew that the
witness who picked Heatherington out of the line-up was somebody to
be believed. If our judges can't be believed, who can you believe?
Aren't they supposed to be infallible?
No one's infallible.
We just do the best we can.

                              * * *

You want to know what'll happen in the 'Judge Manley trial'? Ya,
I'll give you an opinion. But you said 'Judge Manley trial.' A
common mistake. You gotta remember that the person who is assaulted
is not on trial. It's the accused, Heatherington, that's on trial.
Common mistake. And unfair, too.
Okay, you want an opinion? I have no idea. Firstly, unless you've
been in the courtroom throughout the trial, any comment is second
guessing. Secondly, not even the judge can tell until all the
evidence is in. Thirdly, it's hard to predict what a jury'll do,
although juries usually show good common sense. They are the
'triers of fact,' you know. They decide what really happened. The
judge decides the sentence.
I'll say this, though. The accused's lawyer can try to shoot holes
in Manley's credibility as much as she wants, but he picked
Heatherington out of a line-up. Pretty solid evidence.
Sure, the fact the chief witness is a judge has to be important. If
you can't trust judges, who can you trust? They are the cornerstone
of the law and the adminstration of justice, our only barrier
against shoot-'em-out anarchy. But they're human, not infallible.
I said that already?
The sentence if Heatherington's convicted? Hard to tell. The term
sexual assault is so generic, anything from a bum pat to
penetration. Let's see, the last sexual assault here...remember the
head-line? 'CALLOUS, BRUTAL, INSENSITIVE ASSAULT.' Guess what? It
'NETS MAN TWO YEARS IN JAIL.' There you are. Actually, the sentence
was two years less a day which is not two years in jail.
But this assault was against a judge. And against a man. Society
must never tolerate attacks against its judges. And, it probably
won't tolerate sexual assault against men. Besides, it was
aggravated sexual assault. So, ya, the system'll come down hard on
her if the jury finds her guilty.
But the Court'll take into consideration it's a first offence. Her
good character? What does that matter in sexual assault? A lot of
sex offenders are so-called pillars of society, priests, teachers,
choir masters, less than three percent women and usually they are
accomplices of men, although certainly not in this case.
Provocation?  Were those women justified in doing what they did to
Judge Manley?
Okay, so you know so much, why don't you decide? Walk in the
moccasins of a judge, bear the weight of the decision on your
shoulders.
If the jury finds Stephanie Heatherington guilty of sexually
assaulting Judge Manley, what kind of a sentence would you give?

DADDY'S GIRL
Dorothy Colby

"Well, lookie, lookie, the babies," Roy said as he dropped into the seat
across the aisle. He leaned toward Kathy and me. His breath smelled
like fish. "You're not old enough to go to Central. You don't have
tits," he said and made fists and stuck them under his plaid shirt.
"You need big tits," he yelled as he stood and faced the back of
the bus so everyone would see his shirt bulge. "Martha and Kathy
don't have tits."
At that moment my excitement about my new school, a town school,
where I would have new teachers and rotate classes, dissolved. I
hated Roy, hated that he would be on my bus for six more years. He
reminded me of those beetles that live in dampness, under rocks,
the kind that skitter when sunlight strikes them.
The bus seemed crowded even though it wasn't on that first day of
junior high. The air was stifling and the kids noisy. For three
weeks Kathy and I had been planning how we would dress our first
day at Central. We were almost identical: white shirtwaists with
artificial daisies on black grosgrain ribbon at our necks,
crinolines under gathered skirts, white anklets and black ballet
shoes. My ponytail brushed my shoulder as I scrunched my skirt
tighter to fit in the seat beside Kathy, her crinoline and her
violin.
"You're wearing lipstick!" I whispered.
She unzipped her notebook and handed me a brass tube. Revlon. I
looked at the bottom. Rosebud.
"Go on," she urged.
"I wouldn't dare." I handed it back to Kathy. We didn't speak.
We lived on five acres a half mile beyond the city limits on Old
Miller Road. Strange name, Old Miller. There isn't a New Miller
Road or Miller Road, just Old Miller Road. I wondered, but never
asked, if it had been named for a family named Miller. A creek
bordered our property, so perhaps there was once a mill on the
road. I never asked that either.
A large maple shaded our two-storey house. No one ever knocked on
our red front door. Visitors who didn't know us knocked on the
screen door of our back porch. People who did know us crossed the
back porch, knocked on the door, opened it and called, "Hello!"
Each year more weeds wove and twisted through the wire fence that
divided our yard from the drainage ditch next to the road. "Hank,
why don't we put up a rail fence?" Mom asked. "You know, like the
ones you see in pictures of New England."
"Why do you say we?" Dad teased.
Mom never worked outside. She had been a town girl and didn't plant
a flower garden like our neighbours did, or even a border of
marigolds or pansies. There was only the lilac hedge beside the
back porch. The fragrance filled the air when it bloomed in June.
Somebody else had planted it.
On summer evenings Mom swayed on the glider on the back porch,
listening to the Hit Parade and reading Modern Screen or Photoplay.
She liked to copy Grace Kelly's or Audrey Hepburn's hair styles.
She didn't look like either of them. She was prettier. She wore
poppy-red lipstick that matched her nails, which she manicured once
a week. In warm weather she set up the card table on the porch and
lined up her file, emery board, cuticle scissors, cotton balls,
polish remover, base polish, polish, and nail sealer. She bent over
the table, frowning, while she filed and trimmed and stroked poppy
red, first on her fingernails and then her toes.
She hated the small weathered horse barn behind the garage. "Why
don't we tear it down?" she asked.
"It's rustic, Ginny," Dad said. "People decorate their homes with
barnwood."
As a boy on the farm, he'd had a brown horse with two white spots.
He rode it bareback and pretended he was chasing buffalo when he
brought the cows in to milk. He dreamed he would again have a
horse.
Next to the barn was a chicken coop. "If we had chickens, Ginny,
you could sell eggs," Dad suggested. "You'd earn mad money. Cluck,
cluck, cluck." He hugged her and buried his face in her neck.
I remember wiggling between them when I was little. Dad would pick
me up, hold me where I felt Mom's soft breasts on one side and his
hard chest on the other. I felt safe.
Dad was bookkeeper and payroll clerk for a dairy. That was his job,
but his love was his garden. It ran from the chicken coop to the
creek. As soon as the snow melted and the frost left the ground
he'd begin to turn the soil. He'd hurry home, change into old
khakis, pull on his muckers and head for the garden. My earliest
memories are of following him, unable to match his stride, while
the wet earth sucked at my boots.
In spring I'd kneel opposite Dad and drop seeds from my cup into
the furrow. Sometimes mine didn't drift like his, but landed in a
pile. "Spread them with your finger," he'd say, and when we covered
them up, "Pretend they're babies sleeping."
In June, he always popped the first ripe strawberry in my mouth. In
fall, he'd ask, "How many potatoes under this plant?"
"Six," or "Nine," I'd guess as I jumped around, blowing on my
grubby fingers to warm them. When he turned the soil under the
withered plant, I'd snatch the potatoes that spilled from his
shovel.
"Good girl," he'd praise as I tossed them into the bucket.
Dad's garden was alphabet soup   asparagus to zucchini. Mom froze
the vegetables, canned the tomatoes and made jam from the fruit.
Twice a week we drove to town and sold what we didn't need. We
arranged our produce on a piece of plywood Dad fitted over the back
seat of the car. We sold to people with big yards and no gardens.
We'd knock on the back door of houses that were larger than ours.
Dad would carry a flat in each hand. He knew these people. He'd
say, "Especially big strawberries today, Mrs. Nelsen," or "The corn
never tasted sweeter, Mr. Kelly." I could tell they liked him. They
called him Hank.
When I was small, people sometimes asked, "Are you Daddy's girl?"
I'd nod, stand close to him and clutch his pant leg.
As I grew, people said, "I'd hardly know you, Martha. You've
grown." That was when I became his runner   I'd dash to the car for
more tomatoes or corn or beans.
By the time I went to Central I carried my own flat. Dad sold one
side of the street, I the other. We cut our selling time in half
and we'd be home before dark. Customers told me, "Your dad's lucky
to have you to help."
At the end of each selling day we'd buy three chocolate milkshakes
at the dairy. Mom would be waiting, the moths and June bugs
flitting at the screens, the radio crooning. We'd sit on the
glider, Dad flexing his leg, rocking us gently, while we sipped our
shakes.

By Thanksgiving of that first year at Central Kathy and I and our
friends were going to movies on Sunday afternoon. That Christmas I
discovered a lipstick tube in the toe of my stocking. Tea Rose
Pink. On New Year's Eve we celebrated at my house with a slumber
party. Kathy and I grew taller and rounder. Roy forgot to grow.

"Kathy's going to baby-sit her little cousin three days a week," I told
my parents during last week of school. We were eating dinner.
"She'll get fifty cents an hour. She's already making lists of
clothes she's going to buy. I wish I was fourteen, I could get a
job."
"Want to work for me?" Dad asked. "Pick in the garden during the
day, and I'll give you half of what we earn."
I picked strawberries and peas as soon as the dew dried in the
morning. Onions, radishes and carrots when it suited me. I liked
walking barefoot in the garden. The dry earth felt like flour
sifting between my toes. When I got hot I'd jump in the deepest
pool in the creek in my halter and cutoffs. I'd think about Kathy
playing trucks with David in his sandbox while I floated, or dove
to the bottom to pick up stones.
Strawberries were fifty cents a quart, peas thirty-five a bag. The
first week I deposited five dollars in my savings account at First
Security Bank. I made a list of clothes I wanted: red and white
striped top, white shorts, Helen Harper white cardigan, and navy
and white pleated skirt.
One Thursday in late June Mrs. Nelsen called. "Martha, can you help
me? I need six quarts of strawberries Saturday."
Saturday morning I was picking by nine. By ten-thirty Dad and I
were on our way to town. Even with the windows down, the car was
sweltering.
"That red and white shirt I want costs three dollars. I could buy
it today," I said.
"You made the deal with Mrs. Nelsen. The three bucks is yours," Dad
said. He winked at me. I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
Dad sat in the car, while I hopped out and carried the boxes two by
two to the back steps.
Dr. Nelsen came from the garage carrying a golf club. He wore a
green knit shirt and matching pants. He was shaped like a Christmas
tree.
"Hi, Hank," he hollered down the drive. Dad got out and they shook
hands.
"Do you play golf?"
"No, sir, I garden." Dad leaned against the car and crossed his
arms. His biceps escaped from the short sleeves of his white T-
shirt.
Mrs. Nelsen stepped out the back door. Her dark hair had been
teased and sprayed. It didn't move when she tossed her head. Gold
bracelets dangled on her arm. "These are lovely berries," she said.
"I picked them myself," I told her.
"Quite a worker you have, Hank," Dr. Nelsen said.
The door opened and Elinor Osborne stepped out. She wore a red and
white striped shirt and white shorts. I recognized her but didn't
speak. She was two grades ahead.
"Do you know Martha?" Mrs. Nelsen asked. "I think you go to the
same school. Elinor's my niece."
     "Hi," I said.
Elinor picked up a berry, turned it over and put it back.
"Well, let's carry them in," Mrs. Nelsen said, handing two boxes to
Elinor and picking up two more. "Three dollars?"
I nodded.
Elinor returned and handed me some bills. They were folded. She
picked up the last two boxes and I held the door for her.
"Is it fun?" she asked.
"What?" I didn't understand what she meant.
She leaned toward me and whispered, "Being Daddy's little helper?"
I let the screen door slam behind her.
I slid the bills in the pocket of my cutoffs. I didn't count them,
I didn't want to. Dad smiled and got in the car.
"Where to? Robinson's?" he asked.
"I don't want to buy the top today. I feel sick."
He touched my forehead. I closed my eyes and pressed my head
against the seat. I wished the seat would swallow me.
"Sun can make you sick. Maybe I should buy you a sunhat."
When we got home I went to my room, closed the door, and threw
myself on the bed. I buried my face in the pillow.
Monday, when Mom was sorting the wash, she said, "What's this?" She
held up some folded money. "I found it in the pocket of your
cutoffs."
"From Mrs. Nelsen. The strawberries." I took the money to my room
and counted it. She had given me two dollars extra.
On Wednesday when Dad came home I had picked the strawberries and
peas and stored them in the garage. I helped him load the car while
Mom watched from the steps.
"I don't think I'll go tonight," I said after Dad had started the
car. I slammed the passenger door and went to stand on the step
below Mom.
Dad turned off the ignition and got out. He rested his forearms
against the roof of the car. "Was the sun too hot?" he frowned.
"Are you sick?"
"She's not sick," Mom said and put her arms around my shoulders.
"She bought pink nail polish. We're going to do her nails."
Mom and I were on the back porch when Dad came home with
milkshakes. "See," I said. I held up my hands.
Dad took one of them. "Pretty," he said quietly. "How will you
garden with nails like Mom's?"
"I can do it."
"I missed you," he said as we sat in the darkness.
I still worked in the garden, but I no longer went to town. The
next Saturday when he asked if I was ready I told him, "Kathy and
her mom are picking me up. We're going to buy shorts." On Wednesday
I said, "I have to wash my hair. I swam in the creek today."
Dad stopped asking if I was going with him. He'd call, "Bye," or
"See you soon." Sometimes I was in the living room reading or
talking to Kathy on the phone. Sometimes I watched the car from my
bedroom window until it disappeared. When he returned, it was
always dark.
One day, when I was coming downstairs, I caught him hugging Mom in
the front hall. "Hank, she's not your little girl anymore," I heard
her say. She kissed him on the lips and ran her poppy-red nails
through his hair.
He drew her closer to him.
Now, the first warm days in June promise me that summer will
return. And with it, fragrance and sweetness and warmth. On those
days, Dad drifts back to me. He comes with the fragrance of lilacs
and the sweetness of strawberries and the pervasive scent of men
who labour in the sun.

MEMORY FRIEZE
Parry Harnden

Jerry Grayrest copes with the free-wheeling thoughts of his uncaged
consciousness as smoothly as if he were wrestling a hundred-pound
eel. And so he keeps his attention spinning between work and
distraction, loathing the former and finding the latter causes him
to hate himself. His personal problems multiply, and seeing no
common ground among them, he seeks professional help. Dr. Krantz:
"I recommend hypnosis so that your problem may be attacked at its
root." Conveniently, Krantz is a licensed hypnotist. Grayrest
remembers a psycho-analyst once telling him: "If you believe your
problems to be internal, you could use my help; if you believe your
problems come from the outside, you are paranoid and need my help;
if you think you have no problems, you are deluded and beyond my
help." At this, Grayrest ponders his good fortune for if Dr. Krantz
had happened to be a surgeon, surgery would surely have been the
only answer to his troubles.
A bushworker tells his son bedtime stories to induce sleep.
Unfortunately, the man does not know any nursery tales and so
fabricates stories often involving the loss of fingers and limbs to
amok saws, and spines broken in two by falling trees. Night after
night the stories grow more bizarre and morbid until the child
comes to loathe his father's nightly visits which so disturb him
that he cannot close his eyes for fear of the inevitable
nightmares. Soon the child finds himself given to hallucinations
brought on by sleep deprivation, and when he is grown it is obvious
he has dissociated from reality: displays of human misery leave him
cold, while the sight of paper reduces him to tears. To his own
children he tells stories that are as fragmented as the exploited
bodies in his father's tales but at least offer the promise that
the pieces may be re-united on the other side of sleep.
In spring, the psychologist watches his smoke ring skulk across his
office, out the window, across the bay, and past the twisted crag
the locals claim resembles a sleeping man. Many times he has stared
at the rocky figure, imagining himself boring into its skull with
a giant augur and extracting its dreams as if they were tangible
material. No wonder the doctor has a recurring dream of being an
archaeologist working alone on the bank of a small river. Each
night he digs down through layers of quartz spearheads, copper
fishhooks and crematory ashes until he hits a teddy bear dripping
with Freudian gelatin. He clears the site thoroughly until the
family room of his childhood emerges. His moment of astonishment
passes into dismay as he realises he has left himself no avenue of
escape from the deep dark hole. "Hello? Is anyone out there?" he
calls. His voice bounces off the deaf trees and into the distance.
Striking freight handlers meet an army of cop-goons on a dusty
east-end street. Old stories: immigrants cause crime and degrade
the quality of life, law and order is violence, money owns
violence. The actors pause in frozen time as faint, distant calls
for help distract them. Soon the second hand moves again   heads
are dismantled   a bloody jaw falls through space.
"Your memory is like an elevator," Dr. Krantz explains, waving his
gold watch before Grayrest's eyes. "Imagine the elevator   you get
on in present time and as the elevator goes down, so too will your
thoughts go back in time and deeper into your unconscious." At
session's end Grayrest leaves the doctor's office feeling nothing
has been resolved, but at least his thoughts are momentarily off
his own problems for as he steps into the elevator all he can think
is how well Krantz must be paid to afford such a lavishly handsome
watch.
A man feeding a log into a sawing machine has his arm shorn off. He
is summarily dismissed: "We can't use any one-armed men around
here, Urho." Forty years later, two union organizers are murdered
in the woods. The coroner pronounces the deaths accidental and the
double funeral is transformed into a rally. Forty years after that,
a mill worker checks off a name on a voting ballot and his hand
falls off at the wrist. He is voting for a viper that promises,
obviously with everyone's best interests in mind, to create an
environment friendly towards business. The labourer sees the viper
nestled in a glass case and calls to it as a child lost at a fair
calls for his parents. But the viper is preoccupied consuming its
tail and does not hear.
A teacher bores his young students with another convoluted logic
puzzle: "Three old men scavenge among the debris of an ancient dock
for aluminum cans. They stack the cans into a pyramid, the apex of
which dissects the horizon at the breakwater, and then pour
themselves into the cans. If each man is the father of the others,
where is the pyramid now?" A child raises his hand and is called on
for this answer: "If an ancient could chart the firmament using the
measurements of the pyramid, surely old men no longer intrigued by
cause-and-effect could chart the declining curve of their lives on
the evidence of their culture's debris." Consequently, the teacher
will assign the child a failing grade because nobody likes a wise
guy.
Two small cities, as neighbourly as cats with their tails tied
together, merge into a single, larger blot on the map. Fifteen
years later, a documentary filmmaker is surprised to find the local
television station has no record of the merger, having long since
cleared out their cupboards and thrown the scraps to the historical
museum. Miles of unlabelled, soundless footage are found in the
basement of the museum. Crew members hold up reels of film which
have been stapled together and destroyed. There, in a pit of dust
and decay, they begin their futile search, looking for a picture of
the birth of a city that cares so little about itself it throws its
history away.
The city planners are distressed by the limping growth of their
area, so an out-of-town specialist is brought in. The specialist
surveys the compressed skyline   "like a row of broken teeth,"
someone says   and recommends sacrificing half the city: "Every
worthwhile city requires a measure of urban decay." The city
planners embrace this advice, for they are respectful of authority
and have paid handsomely for such wisdom. On the plane home, the
specialist takes a last glance at a map of the city, then tosses it
into his briefcase where it disintegrates over the graphs, blue-
prints and ledgers.
Between performing parrots and Italian trick-cyclist acts, female
pages walk the aisles of a lush theatre spraying the air with
exotic perfume. A vaudeville comedian tells an audience of
psychiatrists a story involving a broken watch and disappearing
ink. The joke bombs, but at a later performance an audience of
architects rolls in the aisles, tears of laughter squirting from
their eyes. The comic smugly explains to his agent, "I told you the
joke wasn't bad, but the first audience knew it was in their
interest not to laugh."
A man complains to his doctor that he keeps falling asleep and
waking up. "How long has this been going on?" asks the doctor.
"Forty-three years," replies the man. Suspicious of another
frivolous complaint, the doctor presses for more details. "How
frequent are these bouts?" "They occur once a day," the patient
says, "and I generally don't wake up for seven or eight hours."
Just as the doctor is about to dismiss the case, the patient
reaches the crux of his problem: "What makes it so unbearable is
that I remember each moment of my waking days, every dull labour
and empty encounter, yet I can't remember even a glimmer of my
dreams. If I can't remember my dreams, when will I ever see the
millions of scattered moments of my life come together?"
Fortunately, the doctor sees a solution and prescribes a drug which
will help the man forget his waking hours and so restore balance to
his life.
Teetering on the verge of an unnameable hysteria, a scarecrow is
tormented by colourless visions playing in his head, induced by the
old newspapers crumpled and stuffed there. Dead straw eyes oversee
fertile fields. An icy axe of wind severs the arms and legs from
the scarecrow and lops off its head which blows over the hills and
into the sea.
The psychologist wakes in an autumn full of grey leaves and an
ashen heap of sky that peers into his ceilingless room. He
discovers he has been robbed of his identity and everywhere he goes
the faces-cut-from-photographs and diplomas-crumbled-to-dust mock
his attempts at retrieval.
The elevator makes an unhealthy grinding noise specifically
designed to make the passengers believe they're on the one in a
million due to freefall and crash. Jerry Grayrest's descent takes
an eternity. The elevator boy crumbles to dust and his remains and
uniform are blown away by a stormy wind. Grayrest is trying to read
a paperback, but the vicious gales are tearing pages out. His
wristwatch says four ice ages past tertiary. The wind dies away. He
observes an anthill by his foot. He stoops down to observe the
ants' industry and is reminded of the story of the two-dimensional
Flatlanders who never grow aware of the third spatial dimension.
The ants crawl across a page from his book.
Stepping off the train, the visiting dignitary stops to ask his
valet, "Did you hear a far-away voice calling out?" A madman has
bound and gagged the sycophantic hotel manager and greets the
dignitary in his place. "Welcome to our forgotten outpost, your
holy imperialist. I trust you'll enjoy your stay, but you'll have
to be out by the twenties 'cause we've several bootleggers and
gunrunners confirmed. Lights out by ten, no dogs on the furniture,
no boodling..." The harrowed celebrity carries his bags across the
pavement to a cheap room that reeks of dank waterbed while the
counterfeit manager continues to browbeat him: "...and don't think
we won't be counting the towels when you leave!"
Two patrolmen enter a brothel looking for a fellow officer who has
lost his mind. "In there," says a prostitute motioning to a closet.
Through the door they listen to the man rave: "Everything I am is
someone else's invention. I am trapped in a present I believed to
be a privileged isolated moment and have justified my every action
by that belief. I have been a Flat-timer all along and never known
it."
Dr. Krantz wakes his wife to tell her about a nightmare he just
had: "I wanted to paint a picture of the town where I lived but
could not find the suitable materials. I went on a long search into
the forest across rolling hills until I found berries which I could
turn into paint. But the journey took so long that when I returned
my town was gone, and another town was in its place." "But why,"
asks his wife, "are you so angry?" "Because I never recognised the
town or even myself. I've been dreaming someone else's dreams and
can't escape them."
A policeman undergoing a disciplinary paid vacation is forwarded to
a doctor for psychiatric evaluation. Both men are of a professional
belief that everyone has something to hide and so approach each
other with finely honed suspicion. To undermine his patient's
guard, the doctor explains that the snags, gaps and imperfections
of speech are generally more important than literal content. The
patient doesn't really understand what is meant but soon learns
that only the most absentmindedly formed thoughts like "when the
world was all water there were no complaints" or "there comes a
time when one must stop punching the clock and start punching the
men who make the clocks" snare the doctor's interest. The dark
doctor works the synapse with a ratchet. "Who does his memory work
for?" wonders the cop. "Under what tables are the wages paid?"
Shopworn secrets tumble from the skull like so many nuts and bolts
  not pleasant, not surprising, not secrets at all. Like elves
working through the night, a team of specialists will ensure the
embarrassing refuse is carefully hidden and carefully forgotten.
A voyageur paddles past the strip joints and malls into a doctor's
office. "I have amnesia, doc, but I'm not so much worried for
myself as I am for others. Is amnesia contagious?" The doctor
assures him it isn't, and of course soon after the patient leaves
both men have completely forgotten their encounter.
In a 1920s vaudeville palace, a mummified audience waits for the
show to start. A smoky woman turns in her seat to roll a man whose
face has caved in but when she removes her hand from his pocket she
finds she has lost her fingers. A lone figure in dark cloak hobbles
onstage carrying a candle. He pauses and asks the audience, "Did
you hear someone say 'Hello'?" His cloak catches fire but he makes
no attempt to extinguish the flames. As he burns, his mask melts
and falls away, followed by layer after layer of melting, falling
masks. When the last mask is destroyed, nothing is left but a
column of black smoke which disperses into the perfumed air. The
audience applauds so vigorously they are pulverised.
A child raises his hand, lone figure in a dark hotel. The child
finds himself given to hallucinations. Tourists flock to see the
hallucinations and ask of the female pages walking the pressed
skyline, "How long has this region been afflicted? Where is the
consciousness of dirt?" Amnesia motions towards a closet. They pass
through. A caricature of a craggy old architect twisted over
sopping wet blueprints points a finger, "That way." They press on
till they reach a cave marked Promise Dwells. "In there," says a
prostitute wrestling an eel. Inside they find the doctorial museum,
cupboards of frivolous complaint, miles of How frequent are these
bouts? in the basement. Behind stacks of yellowing journals, they
find Dr. Krantz amid a disarray of files. "I can't make sense of
what I've written... 'The father of the hand in his pocket?'
'Teetering on the verge of a dummy?' 'Everything I am is in the
office?' What was I thinking? 'Nothing is left but something?' I
can't even recall which patients this stuff refers to." The
tourists leave the poor man muttering to himself. They march from
the cave loaded down with souvenirs, unlabelled soundless footage
of a vast dark chasm.
The rest was a history book bound and gagged, shadow of a crooked
pendulum, men made of paper, thirsts in the well   laid out
shivering there like flies caught in a museum cobweb. Last train
pulling out, anger and ecstasy in a mauling embrace, their
countless children crowding aboard, bound for the primary ocean.
All that can remain is a vector's chagrin and the mockery of
promises, roasted on a spit of autumn hues flowering against the
wintry blue, disappearing into a flame where memory was a joke
played for absolute cruelty.
Grayrest steps off the elevator and finds the lobby empty. Lining
the walls is a frieze illustrating his elevator ride and the events
leading up to it. He runs his fingers over the carvings, leaving
smudges on the glazed stone. He tries following the frieze back to
the beginning, trailing it around a corner and down a stairwell.
Several flights down, Grayrest finds the light failing and has to
use his cigarette lighter to continue studying the panels. He
perseveres down the endless stairs into a pit of darkness. Farther
along, the relief seems to be carved into the walls of a cave.
Grayrest pauses to rest, sitting on a step in the absolute darkness
and listening to water running in the distance, before he re-
ignites his pocket flame and continues. Sometime later, the
illustrations are reduced to paintings, increasingly primitive. By
the time his lighter gives out, Grayrest is beyond the breakers of
memory and drowning in a black misery as thick as lava, the lost
world just beyond reach behind a locked door.

Netty
Sharon Rantala
(an excerpt from the novel, Broken Cisterns)

The living room and kitchen had become a catch-all for strewn junk, but
Netty moved gracefully amid the clutter, her bare feet light on the
gritty floor. She shoved a bag of garbage into the corner, sniffed
the dishrag, and fired it into the trash. She ferreted around
beneath the sink, realized there was no replacement, and retrieved
the rag, rubbing it with hand soap and rinsing it beneath the tap.
"Damn it, Netty, there's cat shit on the floor!" hollered Violet as
she emerged from the bedroom. "And these my new panty hose!" She
hobbled across the kitchen, grabbed the dishrag and wiped her foot.
"If that welfare hen sees cat shit on the floor, we'll never get
Willy back."
"She don't look at the floor, Ma. She looks at you," muttered
Netty.
"Don't smart-mouth me. If it weren't for you, he'd still be here."
"That ain't true."
Netty went to the fridge, removing a plate of ground beef that had
taken on an unappetizing grey pallor. She smacked it onto the
counter and punched it flat.
"It was you supposta get 'im to school!" said Violet. She slipped
into her bedroom and reappeared, tightening the belt above her pink
plastic go-go skirt. Netty rolled her eyes at the bulges above and
below the wide yellow belt.
"Ma, nobody wears minis any more."
"Men appreciate a woman more in this than in those bell-bottom rags
you been wearin. And add some bread crumbs to the meat   don't need
more than a pound for those guys." Violet snatched her make-up bag
off the shelf by the door, unzipped it, and flipped open her
compact.
"They don't eat that much," said Netty.
"If they want more food, they can fork out more money. And for
krisakes, if welfare comes make sure she don't find out we got
boarders." Violet lowered her compact and looked hard at Netty.
"You watch that Herder, girl. He's a con-man just like your dad."
She took out mascara and began to apply it. "Tell them to say Abe's
Herder's friend visiting from out of town for the summer. That
ain't even a lie."
"What part ain't?" sniggered Netty.
"He's from outa town! His parents' farm's a good ten miles out. And
do these stinking dishes. Can't even find a clean cup in the house
to have coffee." She took a mug off the counter, rinsed it, and
poured herself a shot of rye. "Don't know what's the matter with
Abe," she said. "Never says boo."
"He's just quiet."
"He's a gawdam Bible thumper," laughed Violet, lighting a
cigarette. "I was down there last night. He was studying to go to
heaven. What a waste of a good hunk. He better keep it to himself's
all I can say. Had enough Bible talk when my mother was alive. She
preached to the old man all her life, and he'd still have screwed
a woodpile if he thought there was a snake in it."
Abe stood silent at the top of the basement stairs.
Violet turned at her daughter's blush. "Well, you just blocking the
door or are ya coming up?"
He came into the kitchen and stood by the table with his hands in
his pockets. "Mrs. Miller," he said, clearing his throat, "the
V.O.N. called this morning...about your father."
"What, another nurse quit?" she snorted. She plopped onto the
cushionless couch, tugging at the quilt that covered its springs.
"Something about harrassment," said Abe without looking at her.
"Oh, for krisakes, let them put him in jail then. What do I care?"
She reached forward and swept the clutter of newspapers and
ashtrays to one end of the orange-painted coffee table. "Tell ya
one thing   he ain't comin over here no more. And, Netty, you ain't
goin over there. All he wants is money for booze and to look down
your top."
"He don't do that with me," said Netty.
"Then how come you always wear baggy clothes when you go see him
makin sure everything's good and covered? Not like she does around
here, right, Abe?"
Violet dumped out a pouch of tobacco and separated the fibres
through her fingers before packing the rolling machine. Five
minutes later, she slipped the finished cigarettes into a duMaurier
pack. "Damn it!" she said suddenly. "Look at the time! Hank's gonna
be meaner than all hell if I'm not there at six   it's cheap beer
night." She pulled on her high-heeled boots, then her plush coat.
"I'll be late," she hollered as she pushed through the door,
slamming it behind her.

As Netty tended to the dinner, she could feel Abe's eyes studying
her. She turned and looked at him.
"Don't mind me," he said.
"Not if you say so."
He swung his auburn hair off his face and said, "Has he ever tried
to touch you?"
"Who?"
"Your grandpa."
Netty shrugged. "Makes comments about me growing up. When I was
eleven he really teased me   you know, rosebuds 'n stuff. He ain't
too bad now. Think I look too much like my grandma." She dug a
flipper out of the dishes in the sink and pressed the burgers into
the pan. "By the way," she said, "don't go pushing your Bible stuff
to Ma. You'll just get yourself kicked out. And Herder, man, he'll
eat you alive."
Abe fiddled with the ketchup bottle on the table. "What about you?"
he said.
"Don't waste it," she grunted. "I ain't worth it."
His eyes dropped to her wrists, and she tugged at the cuffs of her
Indian cotton blouse so that they covered the scars and scabs.
"You know what I think?" said Abe.
"About what?" she said.
"About you."
She turned to him and met his gaze. At that instant, the back door
banged shut, and Herder entered the kitchen, his nostrils wide
above his scant moustache. Emblazoned in red marker on either side
of his jean jacket were the words "Alice Cooper" and "Dead Things."
He opened the fridge and cracked off a beer cap with his teeth. "So
the guy talks!" he sneered. "'Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Yes, Mrs.
Miller'   thought that's all you could say." He took a long pull on
his beer and said, "Can't say I care for you sittin here cozyin up
to my woman."
"Cool it, Herder," said Netty.
"Watcha staring at?" Herder said to Abe. "You a fag or something?"
"Nope," said Abe calmly. "I just thought you were hipper than
that."
Herder's face soured. "What the fuck ya talkin about?"
"Women aren't considered personal property any more, man."
"You don't know nuthin about the women around here." Herder crossed
the kitchen, putting his arm around Netty. "These girls expect you
to fight for them."
He reached for a butt in the ashtray, lit it and puffed smoke into
Abe's face.
"Fer krisakes, Herder, get a handle on it!" protested Netty. "Abe,
you better get outa here. Why don't you go to the store and get
some cat litter for me?"
Abe ignored her. "Whadaya mean, 'these girls'?" he laughed.
"Tough girls, burnt-brain! What kinda girls do you screw? Or maybe
you just go for hand jobs   your own." Herder shoved his face at
Abe's, but Abe didn't flinch.
"Please, Abe," said Netty, pushing the money into his hand.
The young men glared at one another until suddenly Abe jumped up,
shoved the money into his pocket and left the room.

Netty lay on the bed in her clothes and picked at the peelng paint
on the wall under the window. After dinner, Herder had taken off,
so she'd done the dishes and then made a half-hearted stab at
washing the floor. Abe still hadn't come back after his argument
with Herder. Netty crawled under the blanket. What did it matter?
she thought. What did anything matter?
She was almost asleep when the door opened quietly and Herder
entered her bedroom. He snuggled onto the bed behind her and began
kissing the nape of her neck, massaging her thigh. He put his lips
against her ear and whispered, "You ignore that bastard if he comes
onto you again, Babe. If he don't get the message, I'll fix his
face so he does."
Cocking her shoulder, Netty pushed him away. "No more hickies," she
said firmly. "Ma'll get suspicious if I keep wearing scarves."
Herder picked up her hand. "You're not gonna do something stupid
again, are ya?" he said. He traced the scars up her bare arm. "I
thought when you and me started that ended."
Kicking off the blanket, Netty started to get up, but Herder pulled
her beside him and held tight. "I'll get you outa here soon, Babe."
"Yeah, sure," she said. "You can't make a living on the five-finger
discount, Herder. It's lucky we don't have a rug rat."
"I thought you were doin that rhythm thing your mother talked
about."
She struggled against his grip. "Herder, you ain't gonna stay with
me   don't you think I know you've been with other girls?"
He cupped her face gently and kissed her mouth. "Only twice. Twice
in almost six months of you and me, Babe. Longer if you go back to
the first time we did it."
Netty recalled the first time with a mixture of shame and disgust:
the little Atco trailer in the woods, plywood on the rusted
bed...and the feeling afterward that nothing of any consequence
could possibly come of such an activity. Certainly not with Herder.
"Why do you think I let your mother do her tease act when she comes
home pissed?" Herder whispered. "Letting her think she gets me all
cranked up?"
Netty turned away, and he asked if she had a problem. In the
street, footsteps thundered past, a car door slammed, a cat
screeched   sounds echoing in the hollow stillness of night. She
turned back to him. "Hold me," she said.

"Oh shit!" whined Netty at the sound of her mother's voice. Herder
leapt from the bed, disoriented. But before he could escape the
room Violet was at him with her fingernails and fists, clawing and
punching at his face and chest. "You horny pig!" she screamed. "And
YOU, you tramp!" She lunged at Netty, grabbing her by the hair. "I
get home early from the bar one gawdam night in the year and find
you in bed with scum!"
Herder caught her with a forearm, knocking her to the floor. "What
the hell do you know?" he yelled.
Quickly Abe was up the stairs, gaping at the scene through the
bedroom door.
"You're messing with gawdam scum!" bawled Violet.
"I ain't messin with nobody!"
"Then what's he doin in bed with ya?" Violet regained her feet.
"He's a dumb-ass punk, a gawdam bum who thinks he can go around
conning people, stealing from them!" Violet lurched at Netty,
driving her against the wall.
Herder grabbed Violet. "You don't push my chick, bitch!"
Then Abe was on Herder's arm. "Leave it!" he barked.
"Why the hell do you let him live here if he's such scum?" cried
Netty. "Because his crooked money gets you your booze, that's why!
Is he givin' it to you, too?"
A slap stung Netty's cheek. "Shoulda let your pa take ya when he
wanted to. Where the hell is he now, dumpin me and his brat with no
child support?"
"You cheated on him, Ma! That's all you do is sleep around   how do
I even know he's my pa?"
"You little slut!" Violet clutched her daughter's arm with one hand
and began striking her with the other.
"Hey!" Abe released Herder and wrapped his arms around Violet.
"You're the slut, Vi," Herder said quietly. "Why d'ya think they
took your kid to a foster home?"
"You bastard!" Violet struggled to free herself from Abe's grasp.
Shooting past them, Netty grabbed her jacket and headed for the
back door. As she crossed the kitchen she spotted the cookie jar
and stuck in her hand. "Maid fees!" she called out.
"I'm calling the police!" wailed Violet.
"Do that," shouted Netty, and she and Herder were gone.

The crowd of teenagers around the edges of the rec hall made dim
silhouettes against the painted cinder block of the walls. In the
centre of the floor, girls danced with girls, jutting their hips
and breasts. An artery throbbed in Netty's temple, echoing the
rhythm of "Light My Fire," which poured from the sound system. She
slouched against the exit door, pulling Herder's jacket around her
to cover the beer she was holding. Beside her, Herder laughed,
caught up in some joke with his buddies. "Hey, Babe," he said, "I"m
going out for some " and he pressed his thumb and forefinger to his
pursed lips and sucked in. He thrust his hand in along her waist
and up over her breasts, grabbing the bottle from her hand and
guzzling half the beer. "Keep it hot, Babe. I'll be back."
Netty closed her eyes as another Doors tune blared from the
speakers. For the past four days they had been sleeping in a
plywood shack in the bush behind the rec hall and eating Twinkies
and sliced bologna Herder had lifted from the 7-Eleven. Afternoons,
they walked downtown and hung around the mall till security kicked
them out. The six bucks she'd taken from the cookie jar was long
gone. If only Herder. . .
"Yo, Netty!"
She snapped her head up and looked into Abe's grinning face.
"Where's Herder?" he said.
"You better not hang around. He'll be pissed."
"I gotta talk to ya," said Abe, grasping her arm.
"Herder'll kill me. I gotta go." She pulled away. "Look, tell
Ma..."
"Why don't you come home and tell her yourself? I got my car."
Netty squinted at him in the darkness. "She send you?"
Abe nodded. Backing up to the door, Netty pushed down the latch
bar.
"Listen," Abe pleaded. "I know you're scared about coming home, but
it's better than winging it with Herder."
"I can take care of Herder," she shot back.
"Where are ya gonna go?"
"Straight to hell," she mocked. "And you and your Bible can't stop
me."
He grabbed her arm and pulled her close. "You're already there,
girl."
A chaperon climbed the stairs from the basement, studying them as
he passed.
"Come on, Netty. Come out to the car where we can talk. Two
minutes. That's all." Abe put his arm around her, and she allowed
herself to be led across the hall and out to the road. She slipped
into the Pinto and pressed her forehead against the window. Light
rain trickled across the glass. She had begun to tremble.
"Come on," urged Abe. "Let me drive you home. Your mom'll be cool."
"My home is Hell. Remember?"
Abe tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. "This ain't the
way out," she said. "Not this or hurting yourself either."
Raindrops pinged on the car roof as Netty traced a cross in the
film of moisture on the window.
Again Abe reached for her hand, and this time she let him take it.
They sat in silence until Abe said, "Why don't you come home,
Netty?"
"It's not just home," she said. "My whole life's screwed up."
"So, change it!" he said. "Give it a chance. I'll help you. You've
got something, Netty."
She looked at him and said, "Everybody got something."
"That's not true."
She closed her eyes and put her head against the seat. "Ma and me
just ain't made to live together," she said.
Abe heaved a sigh. "She loves you," he said. "She's just not very
good at showing it."
Netty was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I better get back
in there. Herder'll kill me."
"Forget Herder!" Abe's deep voice cracked.
"I gotta go."
"Here then," said Abe, "take this. Buy some food." He tucked a
twenty-dollar bill into her hand as she opened the door.

Huddling behind the furnace, barely breathing, Netty pressed her
face on Herder's back. Chairs scraped the floor of the rec hall
above, then slammed to an irregular beat as they were stacked along
the walls. The drone of the speakers gave way to muffled voices,
and eventually the side door banged shut, then the front door.
"Well, Babe, we're home free," said Herder, sucking back the last
of his beer. He tried to pull her close. "C'mon," he said, pulling
her hand out of her jacket pocket. Scrunched in her palm, Netty
held the twenty-dollar bill. Herder grabbed her wrist and dug his
fingernails in. "What's this?" He grabbed a fistful of hair,
yanking her head back. "Who gave it to ya?" he demanded.
"Abe," she gasped.
"What for?"
"What do you think?" Netty mocked.
"Don't sass me! What for?"
"Food!" she shouted. "He just came to talk." She slipped the twenty
back in her pocket. "I'm thinkin about going home," she said.
Herder cuffed her on the back of the head, stood up and kicked the
furnace. "I thought you were sticking with me!" He ran his hand
over his hair. "Did Abe offer something better?" he snorted.
"Sort of," Netty whispered.
He glared at her till she covered her face. "Sure, Babe," he
laughed. He crouched beside her and began to rub her thigh. "You
forget about Bible boy," he said. "He ain't never gonna touch you."
"He doesn't want to," she said. "We just talked. Said some nice
things about me."
Herder lifted Netty's bangs, ran his gaze over her body then back
to her face. "What's he tell ya? Things like 'You're real foxy?'
Like 'You got the softest lips that ever been kissed?' Like 'Your
hair flowing wild makes the sexiest sight?' Did he tell you all
that?"
Netty held him tight, sobbing. "Come back with me, Herder. I'll
tell Ma we're..."
"Lovers? Sure, Babe. She'll say, 'Of course it's all right, Herder!
Just move your stuff right into Netty's room!' You idiot!"
He drew back, lit a cigarette and stared at the low ceiling. At
length, he flicked the butt across the room. "C'mon," he said
quietly. "Let's see if there's food in the kitchen."

They lay side by side on an old gym mat Herder had found under the
stage. Netty stared into the darkness. The furnace clunked, then
roared to life, and she cuddled against Herder's back. I'm going
down, she thought, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. She
squeezed her eyes shut, and from the deepest recesses of her skull,
a speck of light appeared, like a firefly, hovering in the night.
In sleep, her body seemed to float, suspended above a vast dark
canyon.
She woke with her heart pounding. Light peeked through the crack
where Herder had placed a beer bottle to prevent the furnace room
door from locking.
Herder snorted in his sleep and threw an arm over her breasts. She
lifted it off and crawled off the mat. Holding her breath, she
inched across the gritty concrete toward the door. Furnace dust
burned in her nostrils. As she opened the door, it scraped, and her
eyes darted to Herder. But his drunken snores continued.
In the kitchen she dug a handful of tiny green pills from her jeans
pocket. Guaranteed to give you bliss, baby. She hoped they would.
She put one on her tongue. It stuck in her throat, and she worked
her spit to get it down. Easing down against the cupboard, she sat
on the floor. Another pill. And another. This time... this time...
Suddenly, she was aware that there might not be enough of them. She
scanned the room. On the counter, so innocently placed, a broken
glass, the type of cheap water glass she'd swiped from restaurants
for Ma's collection. A shard lay inside, as if someone had known
she'd need it.
Netty suppressed a giggle as the warmth of the pills pressed on the
edges of her brain.
Scrunched in the corner, she rested her arm on her knees and began
to scrape the glass across her forearm.
Soon she was drifting.
Somewhere in the darkness, so far away it might have been a star
from another world, the light reappeared   the tiniest speck of
light, gradually growing larger.

Butterflies
Hazel Fulford

Yesterday's baked beans waited on the table with hamburger buns and the
Rice Krispie cake Eileen had baked to offset the scrappiness of the
last camp meal of the summer. "Come and eat," she called.
Mark flopped onto his chair. "Gran, can I have a bigger plate?" he
asked. Lisa, small for five, flitted from window to window, bright
hair floating around her face. "Where's Grandpa?" she said. "Where
is he?"
Barney came in holding a monarch butterfly between thumb and
forefinger. "Caught in the grill of the car," he said. He crossed
the room and put the wounded creature on a shelf.
"Lift me up! Lift me up!"
Mark left the table and appraised the situation. "What's wrong with
it?" he said.
"I know!" Lisa squirmed from Barney's arms and darted to the table.
She plucked a corner from a piece of cheese.
"What's that for?" her grandmother asked.
"He's hungry, Gran."
"He's not hungry, he's sick," Barney said.
"Can I pet him?"
"Better eat your dinner," Eileen said. "Leave him in peace."
After the meal, Mark and Lisa ran outside. Turning her back on the
messy table, Eileen followed them to the dock. The fish duck was
feeding. As it dived, its tail feathers popped to the surface,
bobbing there until its head reappeared.
They walked up the beach past Salo's place to the point. On the way
back Lisa asked again for the story about her mother. Eileen took
her hand, aware of the tender bones, the padding of baby fat gone.
"Which one would you like this time?"
Always it was the same, the one about heaven and the angels. Mark
wandered away. He never listened to the tales. He'd been six when
Margot died and in the intervening years he'd put the pieces
together. Eileen was sorry now she'd concocted such a sentimental
version of it all. But Lisa was so sensitive, so easily hurt. Last
summer she'd cried when they found the bird's nest empty and Mark
said, "Guess the cat next door got them."
Eileen knew she would have to tell her the truth. She'd be starting
kindergarten next week. Eileen hadn't sent her to junior
kindergarten. She hadn't seemed ready, at four, for the rough and
tumble of the playground. But now it was time. They'd have to stop
calling her by pet names like "Kissy-face" and "Button."
On the day long ago when Margot had started school, Eileen had
alked with her, intending to take her right to the classroom. When
they reached the front hall of the school, Margot had broken away
and marched briskly toward the room she already knew was hers.
"Bye, Mags," Eileen had called after her.
The girl had stopped, turned and walked back a few paces. Looking
straight at her mother she said, "Call me Margot."
Now it was Lisa's turn. What would happen if she repeated Eileen's
little fantasy to her classmates? Some kids could be so cruel. And
besides, who believed in angels anymore? For the last time, Eileen
began telling Lisa her favourite tale.

As always, in her mind's eye, Eileen saw Margot on her wedding day, her
auburn hair flaming against the purity of the veil, her dimple
winking as she pushed back the veil to kiss Rod. He was tall and
fair with the angular good looks of an Eaton's mannikin. The first
time Margot had brought him to the house he'd captured Eileen's
hands in his. "If you weren't already taken, I'd dump Margot for
you," he said with a blinding smile.
"Don't trust him," she told her daughter later. "I know his type."
"Oh, Mom, you're prejudiced because he's an actor. This isn't
Hollywood, you know."
No, it was Thunder Bay and Rod worked for Magnus Theatre. Off and
on. He was frequently out of town, on stage in other cities. After
Mark was born, Rod was absent more often. Margot grew thin and
quiet but she never complained. The only way her mother could help
was to babysit while she worked her shift at Zeller's. Margot had
left school when she married.
Still, it was a shock when she turned up in her parents' kitchen,
white and shaking. "He's gone," she said, reaching out with both
hands to grip the back of a chair.
Accident, Eileen thought. She pictured Rod, smashed and bleeding,
slumped over the wheel of the car he always drove too fast. Sorrow
for Margot washed over her, mixed with guilty relief. "Gone?" she
said, opening her arms wide. The younger woman fell weeping into
the embrace as she hadn't done since she was a child.
"He's gone to Stratford," she sobbed. Eileen realized with horror
that she was disappointed.
"He'll come back," she said, her tone flat.
"Not this time," Margot said, pulling away. "I'm pregnant."
"All the more reason why he should hurry back."
"He didn't want any kids. He wants to tour, perform all over the
place!"
"Oh, talk sense. It's time Rod grew up."
Margot turned her back. "He doesn't need me, Mother."
"Of course he does."
"There's someone else," said Margot, and she walked across the
kitchen and out the door.
Eileen worried about everything except what finally happened. Once
she saw a letter with a Stratford postmark. Were Margot's mood
swings a normal part of her pregnancy, or was Rod keeping her on
the hook? Eileen knew better than to ask. Was the marriage only in
remission? She had a sudden vision of a middle-aged Margot,
shoulders slumped and red hair dulled with the years, waiting for
the mailman, listening for the phone.
The day Margot died the doctor said, "Sorry...did everything we
could...baby is fine...can't tell you how...." The three of them
were alone in the lounge, Eileen and Barney on imitation leather
chairs with arborite arms. Copies of The Canadian Medical Review,
The Lancet, and other journals were stacked in precise rows on the
matching arborite coffee table. The doctor's white coat was crisp
although he'd been up all night. He's just changed it, Eileen
thought, her mind in flight. As if in a dream, now she saw Rod
striding toward them down the hall, his arms full of roses.
"You came too late," she heard Barney say.
"What happened? How...?"
Eileen covered her twitching face with both hands, and when she
looked up from her trance he was gone.

"And guess who came to live with us?" Eileen said now.
"Me!!" Lisa shouted, jumping up and down.
"You and your brother," Eileen said. She shivered. The air was
suddenly cooler. Mist had obscured the view. "Go and find Mark,"
she said to the girl. "I'm going inside to do the dishes."
She cleared the table slowly, her summer vigour having departed
with the sun. How would she revise the story? An outright lie, she
realized now. She'd have to tell Lisa that her mother had died when
she was born. How much do you tell a five-year-old? She must never
know the whole truth. That her grandmother had refused to look at
her for weeks after she was born. Barney had taken early retirement
and had taken charge of the baby while Eileen wandered through the
house, making beds, cooking meals, greeting Mark when he came home
from school. When Barney tried to hold her, for mutual comfort,
Eileen pulled away. She'd gone to another place and would break in
two if she emerged.
One day, as if in response to a secret signal, Eileen's feet
carried her to the cradle. She stood there a moment, then knelt and
looked into the tiny sleeping face. She saw Margot's curved upper
lip, sculpted ears, the hint of a dimple. The eyelids quivered,
eyes beneath them scanning dreams that could never be disclosed. Do
they dream in sound? colour? The infant breathed in barely audible
puffs. Eileen slid her arm under the wrapped form and gently lifted
it from the cradle. She was Margot all over again. But she was
christened Lisa, the name their daughter had chosen.
The four of them moved to camp that summer   Barney and Eileen,
Mark and the baby. Five years went by, too quickly, yet each season
left its mark on the grandparents. She had reached a point where
each coming year was a wish, not a promise. The cabin was settling
into the earth. It needed a new roof. She didn't want Barney to
strain himself with heavy work. Last winter's heart attack had been
mild; he wouldn't have another if she could help it.
Now he ruffled her hair as he passed her on his way through the
kitchen. The gesture was a habit of forty years and she liked it,
but her hair was no longer a mass of brown waves that bounced back
into place. Straighter, grey and a bit sparse, it needed combing
every time he mussed it. She smoothed it at the mirror over the
shelf.
She raised a finger, straightened the butterfly, and stroked one
shimmering wing. The frail, almost bodiless thing slipped back into
its unnatural pose. Golden dust clung to Eileen's finger.
"I'm sorry I brought it into the house," Barney said behind her. "I
thought the kids would like to see it up close."
Mark and Lisa rushed inside, heedless of the screen door that
needed to be shut just so.
"Lift me up, Grandpa." Lisa stared at the tiny thorax, the
quivering wings. "Is he getting better?"
"I don't think so," Barney said.
"He's going to die?" The child turned her face to him, as though
for a kiss. "When he's dead can we take him home, Grandpa? Can we
hang him up on a string?"
"I don't believe this," Eileen muttered.
Barney looked at her. "Do you have a pin?" He fixed the butterfly
against the mat of an oil painting and drove the pin straight
through. "I'm putting him out of his misery," he said.
And still the wings struggled, rising a fraction, sinking, rising
again more slowly. Mark sat in the big rocker. "It sure takes him
a long time to die," he said. "OH! LOOK WHAT HE'S DOING!" The boy
leapt from his chair. The black and gold wings were folding, ever
so slowly, coming together like praying hands. "Stop him! Open the
wings. If he dies like that he won't be any good."
Barney's big finger gently spread the wings. Lisa jumped up and
down, hair flying wildly.
"Get more pins, Gran," she shouted. "Stick the wings down too!" A
thick silence settled on the room.
Eileen marched into the kitchen. Pots and pans clattered into the
sink. Lisa was there instantly. She pulled at her grandmother's
slacks, turning her so they faced each other. The child stood still
and fixed the woman's face in her gaze. "What's the matter, Gran?"
"Nothing, Lisa," she said. "It's alright." She knelt and wrapped
the girl in her arms. After a fierce hug, Lisa broke free and
danced across the kitchen floor. She did a pirouette in the
archway, dropping a low curtsey in the living room and spreading an
imaginary skirt above her dirty bare feet.
"Come on, everyone, help me clean up," Eileen said, so loudly that
they all stared at her. "It's time to go home."

The fog deepened, a cocoon that enveloped sky, trees, car and all of
the road but the few feet cut by the headlights. A duck skimmed the
lights in a blue flap. The car pressed forward.
Barney and Mark were quiet in the front seat. Lisa leaned against
her grandmother and yawned. As always, they were bound together
with one seat belt. The car reached the highway where a chain of
traffic crawled silently toward the city. Eventually they
approached the Terry Fox monument. Eileen couldn't make out the
figure of the running boy. She did see a string of ruby tail
lights, outlining the invisible curve. She would tell Lisa the
truth. Most of it, Eileen amended. The story was only a habit now,
the child's way of claiming Eileen's attention.
She would speak to them both in the morning. Mark was so self-
contained. He couldn't ask, but there might be things he needed to
know.
Lisa whimpered in her sleep. In the darkness, Eileen knew her mouth
would be twitching as it always did when she dreamed. She
visualized the curved upper lip, the dimple so like Margot's. When
the child stirred, burrowing closer, Eileen felt a stab of joy so
keen it was close to pain.

Journeying
Tessa Soderberg

We leave camp in the early afternoon, two human beings and a large
dog in a small blue fibreglass canoe. We pull away from the dock,
and I marvel at the peacefulness of the water. Behind us, in the
campground, Laurri and his A.T.V. sputter about, shattering the
silence like machine gun fire. But the racket seems lost in the
solitude of the lake.
We turn and follow the lake shore to our jumping-off point,
wherever that may be. On our right I see only white sand and vague
shadowy trees standing in clustered ranks against the sky. Off to
the left I see nothing but water stretching darkly to the horizon,
and beyond that, clouds and sky and haze.
Our dog, ever eager for adventure, stretches restlessly in the
bottom of our uncertain craft. I have my life jacket on, of course,
but shush him anyhow, since I'm in no mood for a ducking.
Where are we going? Well, we're not quite sure. There's a small
river across the lake that we would like to explore, and perhaps,
if we're lucky, we may find it. It's not difficult to find, it's on
any map of the area. The problem is, the crew of this voyage is
blind.
We come to the jumping-off point, a point indeed, with tall trees
obscuring the sky and shadowing the water. Here we turn and make
our way across the lake. The bow rises and falls in the small
waves, smacking softly with each descent. Water ripples are
indistinct movements under the eye. Gulls and ducks call and loons
haunt the silence with their laughter. Far away, the faint throb of
a motor purrs across the quiet while, closer, we hear shouts of
frustration or joy as fish are lost or hauled aboard. This is not
a big lake but it is a busy one.
It's a long journey across this lake, especially when you're not
sure where you're going. The emptiness is broken here and there by
the dark outlines of islands, standing like stepping stones. Slowly
we make our way between and around them. More open water, and
stretches of shoreline, vague and featureless though only a few
hundred yards away. Then around a bend and there, despite   or
perhaps because of   our doubts, is the river mouth. We cheer and
laugh, how could this be! We had expected to spend hours searching
the shoreline, but here it is. We sit for a time, considering our
good fortune and eating our lunch. Then we lift our paddles and
move on to our goal.
We round a point, leaving behind the world of camps and lakes, and
enter the body of the river. It isn't very wide, perhaps three boat
lengths, no more   wide enough for us to pass through but narrow
enough for us to see both banks. The water is a clear yellow and
smells of fish, reeds and swamp muck, sand and sun. In some places
it seems so shallow we may have to walk. No matter, this is a day
for exploration.
Slowly we move upstream, marvelling at the peace and the silence.
Trees, shrubs, grass, and reeds line the banks and creep into the
water. A sudden splash disturbs the quiet and a dark shape shoots
toward the far bank. A few moments later, we come on the last
vestige of civilization.
The skeletal remains of a railway bridge, half submerged, blocks
our way, and it is here we stop for a second lunch. Hauling our
craft alongside, humans and dog climb eagerly onto the massive
timber which stretches across the water. It is as wide as a park
bench, sun-warmed and covered in velvet moss, and is in some way
strangely comfortable. We sit in the sun, eating peanuts and
tossing the shells into the non-existent current. All we hear are
birds and the sighing of the wind, and all we see is an endless
green, from the brooding greens of spruce and pine to the pale
greens of reeds and swamp scum and the soft middle greens of grass
and ferns   a spectrum of greens. Here and there I can make out the
naked bark of trees, white or dark against the green. And of course
there is the river.
Eventually we lower ourselves into the canoe and paddle
precariously around the far end of the bridge and over the vague
submerged shapes of rotting timber supports. We move on, and as the
sun grows hot a slight breeze rises, bringing relief and the scent
of the river.
A fork in the river sends us up a tiny tributary, a tunnel of
greenness, warm and dark. We move slowly. The channel is barely
wider than the canoe, but soon we are stopped by lack of water so
we backtrack and continue along our original course. This course
too does not last long. We are stopped by an old beaver dam.
With a great deal of effort we scramble out of the canoe onto the
dam, hoping wildly that it won't collapse under our weight, or that
one of us won't put a foot down wrong and twist an ankle in the
mass of roots and branches. Carefully we stand, one on either side,
and haul the canoe up and over this most ingenious of portages. The
dog shifts restlessly, as though to question whether we know what
we are doing. Finally our craft is safe in the water, and we pile
into it and strike out across the beaver pond.
We cross, gliding soundlessly, the deep cool water slipping beneath
us like oil, and continue upstream. Soon, the river becomes an
impassable mass of fallen trees and ankle-deep water. Our dog swims
for a time while we prowl the bank; then, trailing black muck, we
board our canoe and return downstream.
The journey downstream is as peaceful as we could wish. Again we
tackle the dam and stop at the bridge to rest. Finally we round a
bend and there we are again, in the main body of the lake. We
paddle slowly for a while, then, with thoughts of supper and home,
we move into a sheltered bay to do some fishing. We catch and
release palm-size perch, counting ten, twenty, thirty... Why
bother? They just keep biting.
Gradually we work our way into deeper water where the big fish
start biting. Then it happens. My companion, struggling to put a
fish on the stringer, places his rod on the gunwale. A movement of
his arm, a soft splash, and the rod is gone. We have a few moments
of anxious scrambling, but it's vanished. I commiserate with him,
but nothing can be done. Perhaps tomorrow we can return and try to
find it. Then I'm snagged, and together we manage to haul in my
line, only to find that I'm snagged on the missing rod. How could
this be? We both knew we hadn't a hope of ever finding the rod, or
even this spot, again. But luck, or something, is on our side and
into the canoe it comes.

We fished till the sun began to set. Across the sky, bars of
cinnamon and copper, pink and lemon. Slowly, we made our way home,
but the lake was wide, and the sun set rapidly, vanishing in no
time. There we were, two people and a dog, none of us with the
slightest idea of our location or where the campground was. Here
and there, we heard the faint throb of a motor boat, but none close
enough to lend a hand. So we took a wild guess and started
paddling.
Camp fires faded behind us as we focused on laughing voices and
distant lights. We had no light of our own to signal for help, so
we just moved on through the darkness in the hope that we would
come ashore somewhere near our camp. Eventually, we came upon a
large fire built close to the water. Feeling very tired, we crept
toward shore and called to the voices we heard around the fire:
"Where are Laurri's Cabins?"
From the darkness a child's voice answered, "Right here."
A day of good luck, coincidence perhaps. Or maybe there is someone
out there looking after those of us who dare to challenge the
limits.

Cluny Abbey
Bill MacDonald

Aunt Rose, my mother's unmarried sister, was obsessed with the idea of
visiting Cluny Abbey. It was all she ever talked about. She used to
say, "If I do nothing else before I die, I want to go and see the
cloister where poor Abelard spent his final days."
It was no use telling her that Cluny Abbey, the largest church in
all of Europe until Michelangelo built St. Peter's, was now nothing
but ruins; that, although in the 12th century Cluny's abbots were
as powerful as popes, all she would see today would be the remains
of a transept and several hundred metres of crumbling stone walls.
My insightful mother thought this obsession might have something to
do with the tragic story of H‚loise and Abelard. It's true that
Aunt Rose used to teach this story to her high school English
classes. I know, because I was in her class one year and heard it
at least five times. She also used to tell it at family gatherings,
and it always made her cry. She would describe how the beautiful
young H‚loise, an orphan, fell hopelessly in love with her teacher,
Abelard, and eagerly let herself be seduced by him.
"Such a pure, spiritual love," Aunt Rose would say.
"Excuse me," my father would say. "A carnal, erogenous love. In the
eyes of the church, a sinful love. She was only fourteen."
"But in the eyes of God, dear brother-in-law, surely a permissible
love?"
Her voice would deepen dramatically as she told how H‚loise's
maniacal uncle, a canon at Notre Dame de Paris, was so enraged at
his niece's premature deflowering that he imprisoned her in a
convent at Argenteuil and had her despoiler, Abelard, castrated.
Here Aunt Rose would pause to let the horror of her words sink in.
Then, voice trembling with emotion, she would tell how the shamed
and neutered Abelard became a monk at Saint-Denis, and how, when he
was old and sick and knew he would never see his beloved H‚loise
again in this world, he journeyed south to the Benedictine
monastery at Cluny and died.
And then she would burst into tears.
My father would pour her a glass of Madeira and suggest she not
tell this story, if it upset her so much. But Aunt Rose would shake
her head resolutely and, as her sobs subsided, would take a sip of
wine and describe how poor H‚loise, until her own death in 1163,
saw Abelard's face every morning upon awakening, and every evening
swore her undying love to him.

The summer she retired from teaching, Aunt Rose asked my parents to
accompany her to France. But my father said he had no interest
whatsoever in frogs' legs or medieval monasteries, and my mother
wouldn't make the trip without him. So Aunt Rose said to hell with
them, and went alone.
Her first stop was Paris, where she took a room at the Meurice
Hotel on rue de Rivoli. She spent a morning at the Louvre, looking
at Gobelins tapestries, and an afternoon at Notre Dame, where
H‚loise's dastardly uncle had once been a prelate. Next day she
rode the m‚tro to Saint Denis to look at the ruins of the priory,
and on the way back stopped off at PŠre Lachaise Cemetery, where
the bones of H‚loise and Abelard are housed together in a
sarcophagus adorned with gargoyles.
And finally, when she had seen all she wanted to of Paris, she
asked the concierge at the Meurice to get her a train ticket to
Cluny.
"But madame," said the concierge, "there is nothing of interest at
Cluny. You should go to Arles, where Van Gogh cut off his ear. Or
Avignon, where is the Popes' Palace."
"I'm going to Cluny," said Aunt Rose, with some finality.
And so the concierge got her a ticket to Cluny.

Early next morning she took a taxi to Gare de Lyon, bought a croque-
monsieur to eat on the way, and boarded the southbound electric
train.
She says she found the countryside of Burgundy mildly interesting,
but not unlike southern Ontario. There were villages, vineyards,
old Gothic churches. Between Auxerre and Saulieu, she noticed that
all the houses were made of sienna limestone and had red tiled
roofs. At Beaune it rained a little, but at Chalon-sur-Sa“ne the
sun came out, and when she got off the train at Cluny, she felt
happiness welling up inside her.

At the Hotel Ang‚lus, she was surprised to discover the dining room
full of elderly English ladies who, when they saw that she was
alone, invited her to sit with them. They were on a bus tour of
Provence, they said, studying claustral relics, which so far had
been a big disappointment.
"There is absolutely nothing to see here!" said Mrs. Frescobaldi,
a lumpish woman with moles. "I can't fathom what we're supposed to
do with our time."
Of course Aunt Rose told them she'd come to see the abbey, or what
was left of it: the chapel, the transept, the ancient lime trees.
She said she was looking forward to strolling among the ruins,
thinking of H‚loise and Abelard.
"Oh, I know that story," said Mrs. Frescobaldi, engulfing a
spoonful of flan. "King Mark of Cornwall sent his knight Abelard to
Ireland to fetch him an Irish bride..."
"You may be thinking of Tristan and Isolde," said Aunt Rose.
"Oh, really?" said Mrs. Frescobaldi. "Well, my dear, it was all so
long ago."
Aunt Rose says she noticed that the other ladies were smiling, but
whether at her expense or at Mrs. Frescobaldi's, she was not sure.
"It strikes me as odd," said Mrs. Frescobaldi, looking down her
nose, "that a retired person such as yourself should be travelling
alone. Do you not have friends?"
"Oh, I do have friends," said Aunt Rose. "And I have a dear, sweet
sister. But a pilgrimage, Mrs. Frescobaldi, a serious pilgrimage,
is best made alone."

That afternoon, while the English ladies were off tasting wine at
Mƒcon, Aunt Rose paid her first visit to Cluny Abbey. She stood for
a time in what had once been the refectory and imagined Abelard
eating his meals there. In her mind, she followed him up into the
clerestory, traced his steps the length of the nave, and could hear
monks praying. She watched him walk out into the cloister, where
shadows of lime trees dappled the walls, and when he sat down, so
did she. She could hear him weeping, could sense his sorrow, his
humiliation. "Abelard," she said softly, but he was busy writing
something on a piece of parchment.
Later, she followed a group of German school children down into the
partially excavated crypt, and was reminded of her own days in the
classroom. But it was dark and cold underground, and the German
tour guide spoke too quickly, and she was happy to return to the
sunlight. Besides, the echo of the children's laughter unnerved
her.
Walking back to the Hotel Ang‚lus, it occurred to her that the
first time she'd ever heard the story of H‚loise and Abelard, she
herself had been a child. Mr. Tanebo had told it so simply, so
beautifully, that she had cried, just as she was crying now.

Nest day she accompanied the English ladies on a walking tour. They all
wore leather oxfords and ankle socks, and some of them sported sun
hats. At breakfast, Mrs. Frescobaldi said she doubted they'd see
anything of interest.
But they did.
On the way to the ruins, they passed the stables of a stud farm. It
was a warm sunny morning, and Aunt Rose says she could smell the
mephitic odour of the paddock long before she saw any horses. She
says it took her back to childhood days on Grampa Truaxe's farm at
Vicker's Heights: clover fields, prancing black stallions, an
audacious essay she'd written for Mr. Tanebo, entitled
"Bloodlines."
At one time, the tour guide was saying, Napoleon Bonaparte had bred
cavalry horses here. As a matter of fact, direct descendants of the
Emperor's white charger, Marengo, still lived here.
And at that moment, as though on cue, hostlers led a slender young
mare out of her stall. She was nervous, quivering, understandably
frightened. The stablemen restrained her with ropes. And then,
while she stood trembling, they had led out a snorting, salivating
stallion, his front hooves wrapped in burlap.
Relating this story after her return, Aunt Rose said that she and
the tour guide were the only ones courageous enough to watch. The
English ladies, realizing what was about to happen, turned away.
Some of them put their hands over their faces. Mrs. Frescobaldi
stuck her fingers in her ears.
"Oh, he was such a fine handsome animal," whispered Aunt Rose. "Big
and strong, like Grampa Truaxe's top horse, rearing up, brandishing
his great purple pudendum."
"His what?" said my father.
"His pudendum. His instrument. His organ!"
At a certain point, she said, the graceful young mare had whinnied
loudly, and the English ladies had shuddered. And then, when the
dust had settled, they took their hands away from their faces and
looked accusingly at the tour guide.
"Did you hear that terrible, terrible whinnying?" cried Mrs.
Frescobaldi.
"I expect you'd whinny too," said Aunt Rose.
Which made the other ladies laugh and give her looks of admiration;
and this time she knew they were laughing at Mrs. Frescobaldi.
For the rest of the morning, she pursued the English ladies through
the ruins, listening to the tour guide tell about life at Cluny in
the Middle Ages. They saw where the Clocher de l'Eau-B‚nite had
been, and the ancient flour mill, and the vineyards where the
Benedictine monks had toiled. At the end of the tour, they were
shown a pathetically gnarled and twisted lime tree, which the guide
said was hundreds of years old and named Abelard, after an
unfortunate Cluniac theologian.
Following lunch, the English ladies left by bus for Dijon, where
the Romanesque �glise St.-B‚nigne awaited them, and at three
o'clock, just as it began to rain, Aunt Rose boarded the northbound
electric train for Paris.

On her way home, she stopped off at the Meurice Hotel again, on rue
de Rivoli, and when the concierge saw her, he asked if she'd seen
anything worth remembering.
"Oh, yes!" said Aunt Rose. "I did. I certainly did!"
But the concierge, without asking her what she'd seen, only
shrugged and looked dubious.
Next morning, she went across the street and sat in the Tuilieries
Gardens. She watched children sailing toy boats on the circular
pond, and old men playing p‚tanque. Then she wandered among the
symmetrical flower beds, and stood under Napoleon's Arc du
Carousel, wishing she had come to Paris as a young woman.
In the afternoon, she crossed the river to the Mus‚e d'Orsay and
looked at Renoir's Moulin de la Galette and Manet's D‚jeuner sur
l'Herbe. But these paintings left her vaguely disturbed. Outdoors,
the sun was too bright, the streets too noisy, and on Pont des
Invalides a woman in rags begged her for money.

Soon after Aunt Rose returned, my parents invited her to dinner. She
told us all about Paris and Cluny Abbey and the busload of English
ladies, and it seemed she was actually going to get through a meal
without crying.
"Aunt Rose," I said as we were starting dessert, "who was Mr.
Tanebo?"
Her teacup stopped halfway to her mouth. My father put down his
fork. Everyone looked at me as though I'd uttered an obscenity.
Strangely, it was not Aunt Rose who answered, but my mother: "Mr.
Tanebo was a teacher at Eden Park High School, many, many years
ago. Your aunt had a crush on him."
My father took the precaution of filling our wine glasses.
Aunt Rose looked dismayed. "A crush?" she said, barely above a
whisper.
"He was twice your age, for God's sake!" snapped my mother.
"He may have been," said Aunt Rose, eyes misting over, "but I loved
him. You never understood that, did you?"
"Oh, I understood," said my mother, almost vehemently. "I
understood how you used to go to his classroom every day after
school, and how he used to lock the door. I understood how the two
of you used to go walking at night in Vickers Park. I understood,
Rose. I wasn't stupid!"
"Oh, no," said Aunt Rose. "You certainly weren't stupid."
My father pushed back his chair, and I thought he might intervene.
But he only sat there, shaking his head.
"So what happened?" I said.
"What happened?" said Aunt Rose, dabbing at her eyes with her
serviette. "I'll tell you what happened. Your conscientious mother
exposed my little secret to your grandfather, and as a result, Mr.
Tanebo was issued an ultimatum: resign or be dismissed. Not
surprisingly, he resigned. I never saw him again."
The dinner in shambles, my mother gave me dark looks, as though it
had all been my fault. "He was twice her age, for God's sake!"
"But I loved him," said Aunt Rose, crying now. "I keep trying to
tell you, I loved him!"
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if this was why she'd
never married, never had children, and now faced an old age of
loneliness. I wondered if this was why she'd squandered a lifetime
in teaching, a profession which had neither challenged nor
satisfied her, and one which my grandfather continually disparaged.
Perhaps sensing my curiosity, she reached across the table and took
my hand. "How different things might have been," she said. "I could
have had a son...."
Rummaging in her purse for a handkerchief, she held up a glossy
photograph of a ruined cathedral. "Look," she said, drying her
tears, "I've got this very nice postcard."
"From the concierge at the Meurice?" I said.
"No," said Aunt Rose. "From my friend, Mrs. Frescobaldi. She's
invited me to England."

The Gravediggers
(from a memoir entitled A Recollection of the Boneyard)
Charles Wilkins

Monday morning at the cemetery   hangover and confusion: Peter the Dutch
gravedigger sitting atop his massive hydraulic thunder-lizard,
revving it to the deepest recesses of its innards and spewing out
such putrid clouds of exhaust that nobody else in the repair shop
can get a lungful of breathable air; Johnny, Peter's Italian
assistant, ramming the tail end of a salami sandwich into his
mouth, running across the lawn firing salamifarts as Peter screams
at him in Dutch to move his tail because a funeral's arriving in an
hour and they haven't even marked out the grave; Scotty, the
despotic old manager of the place, high in his second-storey
office, looking out over his domain, a snappish slug-eyed little
general; the same Scotty tossing back a three-ounce bracer of
whisky to fortify himself against the day, emerging from his office
and descending the stairs just in time to see his teen-age grandson
mistakenly pouring latrine disinfectant into the gas tank of a
brand new Lawn Boy; Scotty firing his grandson on the spot then
lurching out after him into the Garden of Gethsemane, his trousers
half-stump because as usual he has neglected to loop his suspenders
over his shoulders; Scotty rehiring the boy so he can fire him and
rehire him the following day and the following one and so on;
Bruno, the big Neapolitan Ph.D. candidate, finishing a page of
James Joyce as he absent-mindedly rubs a file back and forth over
a set of clippers he has been ordered to sharpen; Scotty returning
to the shop, three shades of pomegranate in the snapped veins of
his face, screaming at Bruno that he too will be fired if he's
caught reading on the job again as he is two or three times a week;
Bruno hollering back that he's sick of Joyce anyway, "right up to
the nipples," while over in the corner Fred the one-armed gardener
mixes up an incredibly smelly batch of Robusto-brand nitrates and
horseshit for his roses.... I myself racing down the cemetery's
main road in my decrepit Alpine, late as usual, fishtailing on the
loose gravel where the main road branches into the Garden of the
Virgin Mary, trying desperately to keep the sound of my engine
down, coasting the last hundred feet to a halt under a spready
silver maple just as Scotty descends the stairs from his second
life-sustaining gurgle of 80-proof blended screaming Where the hell
were you? and that the next time I'm late I'm fired once and for
all, and me protesting in the sincerest voice I can raise that I
had to wait for a train at a crossing on Lander and getting docked
a half hour's pay and told to get out there pronto to help Bruno
get a grave ready because the mourners are gonna be there in a wink
and because the dead man is the former Reeve of X Township, and so
on and so on.... And meanwhile under the customary Monday morning
cloud of laziness, pettiness, halitosis, chaos, inertia, three or
four other lowly employees trudge off with the enthusiasm of
week-old stiffs to begin their temporary spiritless bottomfeeding
bonehead jobs, their only consolation being that, even in 90
degrees of heat, work in the cemetery is relatively easy and that
if they're resourceful they can sleep two or three hours a day
under the honeysuckles out by the paupers' graves where Scotty only
goes when he's caught short and can't make it back to the shop to
piss out all the whisky he's consumed since the day began with its
usual irrelevant furor, threats, firings and rehirings at eight
o'clock in the morning.

I promptly join Bruno who is away out in the Garden of the Apostles
lying reading under a tree while Peter finishes the digging. The
digger is a formidable yellow dragon of a thing with hydraulic
arteries and veins running everywhere and a barrel-sized scoop
whose teeth take a bite exactly the width of a standard grave. The
machine is so strong it can crash its way through three feet of
ground frost in winter. Yet Peter handles it with great delicacy
so much so that one day Scotty, in a rare moment of appreciation,
declared that he could "probably change gawdam diapers with it."
All very neat, except that this time Peter is rattled because the
sidewalls of the grave keep caving in. Apparently the neighbour
graves have been dug too close; and, sure enough, as I peer into
the hole I can see the old rough-boxes, single on one side, two
deep on the other, the top one in danger of collapsing into the new
pit.
Bruno rises on his elbow and shouts that Joyce is a long-winded
bore and that he can't understand how he ever got his reputation.
"Fortunately the man is brilliant," he elaborates, "which prevents
him from being an ordinary bore like you, Wilkins." He looks at me
solemnly and reaches into his pocket for the tiny bag of marijuana
that he carries constantly. He has a patch of the stuff growing
somewhere on the back acres of the cemetery, although he refuses to
say where, and I can never find it when I'm out there mowing   his
"secret garden" he calls it. He rolls a stout little reefer and
hands it to me to light. Peter gets a whiff and comes over, then
Bert the Belgian who has just driven up on the tractor hauling the
coffin-lowering frame and the rugs of fake grass and all the other
paraphernalia required to get the Reeve of X into the ground with
a proper portion of dignity. Peter does some earnest smoking then
heads off on the digger to pick up the concrete outer-vault that
goes into the grave before the coffin.
When the reefer is nearly gone, Bruno takes a last long tow on it
so that you can almost smell his fingers burning. He gets up and
flicks the roach into the grave, stands reflective with his hands
on his hips. He breathes deep, the Colossus of Hades. "If I'd
written Ulysses," he hollers into the wind, "I'd've made the damn
thing worth reading!" In me, he has an appreciative audience for
his bull and is perpetually adding fuel to the half-assed literary
debate we've had going since way back in early May. Beneath his
apparent disdain for this writer or that one is a passion for
literature that keeps him reading five, six hours a day. Even in
the few months I've known him he has read perhaps a dozen writers,
a wildly erratic syllabus that includes Mickey Spillane, Terry
Southern, Carlos Castanada, Germaine Greer, Celine, Miller, Arendt,
the Bible, Bellow, Behan, and now of course Joyce. Surprisingly,
his formal education is in economics and business. And a prodigious
education it is. He has an M.A. from the University of Bologna and
another from Columbia in New York. At the moment he is awaiting
word on his doctoral thesis from the University of Pennsylvania. He
works in the graveyard for $3.80 an hour while downtown a panel of
executives considers his application for a job in the investment
offices of Imperial Oil. "If they've got any mustard," he tells me,
"they'll gimme the job, no ifs or buts." Fifty thousand he hopes to
make, declaring that when he gets his first cheque he'll go
straight out and buy a Fiat firewagon and a couple of Armani suits.
Meanwhile Scotty's little green Vauxhall comes over the rise and we
all hop to it, shovelling, raking, sweeping, generally making
things presentable while the reeferbuzz comes slowly to our temples
and ears.
Today, because it is threatening rain and because the dead man is
something of a personage, we have to raise the big green canopy
over the grave   always a pain. Bert unrolls it on the lawn.
Scotty approaches under full sail and immediately spies Bruno's
book. "I thought I told ya t' get ridda' the damn thing!" he
bristles.
"Am I reading?" sniffs Bruno.
"Yer not doin' much else!"
Bruno leans on his rake, feigning hurt, indignation: "How can you
say that, Scotty? Look at me! I want this funeral to be a... an
event... a celebration!"
"You'll be celebrating the gawdam sack," growls Scotty, and he
marches back to his car where he keeps a flask of Scotch in the
glove compartment. "You've got twenty minutes to get the canopy
up!" he hollers from the road.
After a brief flurry of bogus enthusiasm, Bruno saunters over to
his book, plunks himself down and finishes the page he has been
reading. He is a walking dose of irreverence, Bruno is. During my
first week on the job I asked casually if anybody ever opened the
coffins before the graves were filled. At this he jumped into a
grave and flipped open the box, exposing a dainty old lady in a
flowered dress. "Very peaceful," he whispered up at me, and he
banged down the lid.
He has been in the city six months and remains not because he likes
it but because his sister is here and because his student visa has
run out and he can no longer live in the United States. His
citizenship is Italian. He is having visa problems in Canada too,
though he hopes the people at Imperial will sort them out. He lives
with his sister in a dinky apartment in the suburbs and takes the
bus ten miles to work every day. It isn't the life he dreamed of at
Columbia, but it's better than selling "miracle" brooms
door-to-door as he did after he arrived here from Pennsylvania. He
tells me that in two weeks of selling he managed to get rid of only
two brooms for a gross income of fourteen dollars. Which was in
fact a net loss since his peddling license cost him ten dollars and
the brooms three-fifty each. "And besides," he says, "I buggered up
my running shoes so they're only good now for gravedigging."
"And reading Joyce," I add.
"Yes," he says, "and jerking it sideways," and he screams out a few
strains of Italian opera. This is the remarkable thing about Bruno
  whatever is happening he manages to remain cheerful, clownish.
The only times I ever see him depressed are the times at which he's
reminded that he hasn't been with a woman for three or four months.
And even these bouts are usually brief. "Wilkins," he'll say to me,
"I need a woman   what am I gonna do?"
"Go get one."
"I oughta' go downtown and get myself a good hooker."
"Go," I tell him.
"Can't afford it."
"Get a girlfriend."
"Can't afford it."
This sort of thing continues for a bit and generally leads into
some sort of reminiscence about the prostitutes in Naples or his
old girlfriends in New York and how sensational they were, etc.
etc. And before long his horniness has taken a turn and his
cheerfulness is back and he's forgotten about his depression.
One weekend in an attempt to get him serviced I took him to a party
at the university. Unfortunately, of the two girls he met, one was
inseparable from her history professor and the other was too dull
to appreciate his somewhat unusual talents and personality. "If I
were a broad," he said to me on the way home, "I'd screw all the
time. Day and night. I'd never stop." His deprived sensibilities
have been confused by some notion that women can find desirable
partners any time they happen to want them. Perpetual satisfaction.
And he can't even get a nibble. By way of sympathy I offer up my
own simple view of the mating lottery (a view derived of many minor
heartbreaks and refusals over the years): "Some women appreciate
you and some don't," I tell him. "That's the way it is; there's
nothing you can do to change it."

Against every law of physics and trigonometry we succeed in getting
the canopy up, although when I stand back to check its angles I see
that it looks more like a staggering daddy longlegs than a peaceful
shelter for a family of mourners. The canvas is flapping crazily
and the poles and guy ropes are straining every whichway against
the wind: FLAPFLAPCREEEKFLAPFLAPWHOOOSHFLAPFLAP.... Peter returns
on the digger with the concrete outer-vault, but because of the
canopy he can't get close enough to the grave to lower the thing
and we have to take everything down and start over. But this time
it's a race against the clock   as well as the storm which is fast
approaching with its black clouds and thunder. We scurry around
like contestants in some whacky television game and accomplish in
seven or eight minutes what would normally take half an hour. Bert
throws down the artificial grass, Peter the lowering frame.
Together they crank up the frame so that its straps are tight
enough to take the weight of the coffin. A black station wagon
arrives carrying twenty or thirty floral bouquets from the funeral
home. The driver is an apprentice undertaker of about eighteen who
goes about his work with gloomy intensity, long stiff-legged
strides. I help him cart the bouquets over to the grave and as I
put each one down he adjusts it so the effect is just so. He's
somewhat agawk that we're only now finishing with the preparations
and asks if we're aware that the funeral is already on its way.
"We've been waiting for it since six this morning!" barks Peter.
"If it doesn't come soon we're gonna put all this shit away, and
you can bury 'im yourself!"
As a last measure of security, Bruno takes the sledgehammer and
knocks the canopy stakes a little further into the ground. Peter
tells him not to, but he pays no attention and suddenly everything
has been pulled so tight that RRRRRRRRRRIP, and a five-foot split
opens right down the centre seam of the canvas. We all gaze up as
if the sky itself had been ripped open. The young undertaker is
almost in tears. Scotty has warned us a thousand times about
ripping the canopy. Luckily he's unlikely to see it as he doesn't
generally go too close to the prepared graves. According to Peter
he's afraid he'll fall in and we won't let him out, which in a
sense does represent his point of view. Scotty is over seventy and
doesn't want any gratuitous reminders that he's soon enough going
to be lowered into a muddy grey hole. He wants even less to be
reminded that the lowering will be conducted by his own patchy
employees. Yes, old Scotty owns a burial plot right here in
Willowlawn, although he keeps its location a dark secret. He's
afraid, says his grandson, that one of us might "bugger it up," and
his apprehensions may be justified; Peter once told me he could
hardly wait to piss on Scotty's bones. Of course Scotty would do
the same to Peter, and more so, if there were any way to accomplish
it.
We immediately slacken the guy ropes, taking tension off the torn
seam and inadvertantly freeing up the rest of the canopy, so that
the whole thing is now slapping itself around.
"Maybe you should take it down," says the undertaker.
"Maybe you should put a cork in it!" says Peter.
Everybody looks at Peter for direction.
"To hell with it," he snarls. "Let's get outa' here." And we
quickly sweep up and throw the implements onto the wagon. Peter
roars off toward the shop on the digger, Bert close behind on the
tractor.
Bruno and I walk casually up to the statuary garden at the top of
the rise while the young undertaker fiddles with the flowers at
graveside. Finally he gets everything right   except for the rip of
course and the near-constant flapflap of the canvas.
Bruno ducks behind some shrubs, lights a smoke, pulls out his book.
I shake a pebble from my boot as Fred the one-armed gardener
emerges from the rose bushes gesticulating skyward and yattering
away in pidgin English   something about the weather.  He joins us
for a cigarette while Matthew, Mark, Luke and John glare down from
the corners of the garden, their limestone eyes brimming with
disapproval. The whole cemetery is littered with third-rate
statuary: the Apostles, the Prophets, the Patriarchs, the Virgin,
you name it... and smack in the middle of things an enormous sad
depiction of the Son of God looking entirely miserable in his
surroundings. Fred gestures skyward and attempts earnestly to
communicate. He knows about a hundred words of English and reminds
me of some misshapen peasant out of a Breughel painting. His work
clothes are practically solid with grease and his arm hangs down
nearly to his knees. It's about as close as Scotty ever comes to a
joke to say that Fred should get only half pay because of his arm
haw haw. If there were justice he'd get double pay; he does twice
as much work with one arm as any of the rest of us do with two. I
asked him once how he lost the arm and when he didn't understand I
reached out and patted his shoulder stub and gestured with my hands
in puzzlement. He immediately thrust out his arm and sighted down
it as if it were a rifle. "Blam!" he shouted. Peter talks a bit of
German with him and tells me he was a resistance fighter in Poland
during the war and spent three or four years in a prison camp. In
winter he stays on at the graveyard part-time, doing whatever jobs
he can accomplish with one hand. In spring he gets ready for summer
and in fall he gets ready for spring. But there is only one season
of any real distinction to him   summer, when the gardens are in
bloom and his hand and knees are filthy with soil. He is never
without his hat, a greasy little rag of a thing with a small peak
like an umpire's hat.

The funeral procession winds through the main part of the cemetery
like a monstrous black caterpillar, slow and self-important. Scotty
leads it along in his green Vauxhall, knowing that if he slows down
even a hair it will nip him on the backside. He weaves just a
little under the whisky.
The three of us watch from a distance, Bruno and I staying low
because we're supposed to be trimming hedges during the service. It
is Scotty's outrageous claim that he never gets anything but a full
workday out of his employees   every minute a workminute.
Miraculously, just as the coffin is being unloaded, the wind begins
to drop, so that barely a minute later everything is hush. It is
the calm before the storm, and for reasons of fortuitous timing it
takes on a curious, eerie significance. The canopy hangs limp over
the grave; the sky blackens dramatically. Everything is so quiet
that even fifty yards away we can hear the dispassionate drone of
the minister's voice. This and the sporadic grumble of thunder.

. . .Thou turnest men back to dust,
and sayest, Turn back O children of men!. . .

The service goes off without a hitch, and is just over when again
the wind begins to churn, the lightning to crack out of the sky. A
minute later the storm hits full fury. The last mourners scatter
for their cars, and Fred and Bruno and I run for cover under a tall
spruce. It is the wrong thing to do on account of the lightning,
but I haven't the time or inclination to make the point. We huddle
up so close that, by the time the storm eases, Bruno and I are half
petrified by the garlic on Fred's breath. We are also just as wet
as if we'd avoided the tree altogether and stretched out on the
lawn for fifteen minutes.
Bruno and I slog over to the grave to discover that the canopy has
been ripped wide open by the wind. Bruno lets out a war whoop and
hauls it to the ground. He flips the latch on the lowering frame
and the walnut coffin slides into the grave, clunking as it hits
the concrete. Peter arrives on the digger, Bert following on the
tractor with the wagon. Peter's mood has improved and he is singing
loudly in Dutch. He has a nice tenor voice. Soon Bert is singing in
French and Bruno in Italian, each trying to outdo the other in the
name of chaos.
Bruno and I dismantle the canopy while Bert removes the lowering
frame and the rugs of indoor-outdoor. When everything is cleared
back, Peter attaches a cable to the lid of the concrete vault and
hoists it up on the digging bucket. He tosses me a caulking gun. I
tighten its pressure screw, kick the mud off my boots, and lower
myself into the grave. There is water on the lid of the coffin and
as I work I twice come close to flipping off my feet. Edging my way
round, I spread caulking tar on the upper edge of the vault. This
finished I hoist myself out and Peter lowers the lid which emits a
small splish as it hits the tar: the Reeve of X sealed tight
against eternity.
By the time two tons of clay have been ploughed in on top of him
the sun is shining and the wind has swung from east to west.
Peter and Bert take off on their vehicles, and Bruno and I trudge
up to the shop for our coffee break. We cut through the economy
graves along the far fences, through the Garden of Gesthemane, into
the Garden of the Last Supper and the most expensive graves
affluence can buy.

                           -----------

At noon sharp Bruno and I leap into my old Alpine, a mouldering
wreck of a sports car, and clatter off to Paletta's Sport Bar for
lunch. We're no sooner through the door when Paletta tears into
Bruno in a fit of operatic Italian. Bruno lashes back then suddenly
pulls out his wallet and, in a grand gesture, throws a handful of
bills onto the bar. He sees that one of them is bigger than he'd
intended, snatches it back, and stuffs it into his pants pocket.
The two engage one another in a Mexican standoff, until Paletta's
wife emerges from the kitchen and returns the money to Bruno who by
this time has ascended into a self-righteous pique.
"What'll it be?" she says quietly as she ushers us to a table by
the window.
"Double meatball sandwich," whispers Bruno. "With Provelone.  And
a Brio. And an extra roll."
The argument, it turns out, is over a soured dope transaction, in
which Bruno has supplied Paletta with an ounce from his private
harvest. "He rolls tiny little slims, half tobacco, half timber,"
whines Bruno, "and he blames the grass when he can't get off!"
A minute later Paletta appears at the table muttering
apologetically in Italian. Bruno mutters something back and gets up
to make his daily call home to see if his letter from Imperial has
arrived: his magical, mythical letter, the one that will put wings
on his back, and Armani suits and hundred-dollar pyjamas... and a
bucket seat under his furrow.
But of course it hasn't arrived.
"Fuzzball?" says Paletta sheepishly as we finish up, and, after a
momentary pause to decide whether he has entirely forgiven his
countryman, Bruno rises with a sniff and takes his place at the
mechanical soccer game in the middle of the restaurant. The two of
them plunge into intense voiceless combat, which ends a few minutes
later with both of them in a porksweat.
On the way back to work the coat hanger that holds up the exhaust
system on the car lets loose, setting up an ear-splitting din,
sparks flying, everybody rubbernecking as we go balling down St.
Clair toward the graveyard.

The afternoon is a marathon of grass clipping   all the stray grass
around the stones, where the power mowers can't get to it. Talk has
never been cheaper, and Bruno eventually gets onto his Ph.D., about
as rancorous a topic as you could hope to avoid. Like all
unfinished degrees, especially the big ones, it's a kind of disease
in his gut and won't leave him alone. His dissertation is a
long-winded abstraction, a formula actually, by which he hopes to
describe the economic futures of impoverished countries. Social
conditions, politics, climate, history, immigration, emigration,
native belicosity, natural resources, GNP, arms build-up are all
part of the model, which is so complicated even Bruno despairs of
trying to explain it. At least to me. Factors on top of functions
on top of factors. I ask him if the formula works and he stands
there hustling his balls, a faint smile on his face. It occurs to
me that he doesn't actually care whether it works, or about
economics period. I put it to him, and he fixes me with a baleful
stare, explaining presently that economists as a group are a notch
above skunks on the scale of mammalian worth   "and two notches
above lawyers."
Part of him would love to kick over the whole business, to tell his
professors where to put it all and how far up. They've tyrannized
him for years and for what?   the possibility of some ulcerating
job and a few suits and a car. "And women," he reminds me. "If you
have money you have women."
"You should put that in your formula."
"Yes, yes, that's the kind I want, formula women; they all prefer
money to no money."
Scotty keeps a half-cocked eye on things and at about three o'clock
floats out, looking surlier than usual, to pay his respects. He
shuffles around, kicking and glaring at the turf as if searching
for a lost dime. "You missed some," he says, pointing at a few
blades of wayward grass. "Gimme those." He grabs the clippers out
of my hands. "Like this," he says, and he pokes around for a few
seconds, accomplishing nothing, muttering an aimless stream of
invective, eventually realizing that it's all hopeless   the
clippers are dull, his eyesight bad, the grass elusive, alcohol
mightier than duty; and he heads back to his office to booze out
the rest of the day in the appreciable harmony of the Peaceable
Kingdom.
"Sharpen 'em!" he yells over his shoulder and goes babbling off
about how much good university ever did me, ever did anyone, so on.
A few minutes later we are joined by our sometime clipping
companion, Norman, who is seventeen and plays guitar in a rock band
in Downsview. He has a kind of saut‚ed sheen about him, greasy
hair, faint moustache; always has a little garden of pimples
blooming around his chin. During his first couple of days at the
cemetery he wore a T-shirt bearing the terse command "eat shit!"
The message was printed in compact, computerized script about an
inch high, and initially Scotty ignored it   or was too drunk to
notice. But at lunch hour of the second day, while Norman was
standing in the shop, Scotty suddenly staggered toward him, bent at
the waist. He halted a foot in front of Norman's chest and for ten
seconds or more stared at the multi-coloured dictum. Gradually he
straightened up and stammered, "What the HELL is that?"
"A T-shirt," said Norman.
"Well, get it off! I won't tolerate it! Get it off NOW!"
When Norman complained that he'd get a sunburn with no shirt,
Scotty disappeared upstairs, appearing momentarily with an old
black work shirt so grizzled and disgusting that he held it between
thumb and forefinger, at arm's length, as he descended the stairs.
"Here," he said gayly, "put it on," and he watched as Norman
slipped into the abominable garment and pushed its two remaining
buttons through their holes.
Norman's conversation varies but is more often than not a narrow
litany of Ludwigs, Telecasters, Stratocasters, tweeters, wawas,
Pink Floyd, Genesis, Mick Jagger. Bruno doesn't care for him and
one day tells him, "Rock music's shit, Norman. I don't know how you
listen to it."
"Your trouble," Norman responds, "is that you don't know what to
listen for. You've gotta train your ear."
"To do what?"
"To listen, man. To listen to the music. What music do you listen
to?"
"Classical," quacks Bruno. "Suppositorski."
Beyond his desultory physical labours, Norman's chief contribution
to life at the cemetery is that he occasionally comes up with a
decent story. Like the time he was walking home from a drugstore in
Scarborough with a plastic shopping bag when a car squealed up in
front of him, blocking his path on the sidewalk. "These two
headbangers in baseball jackets jump out and push me up against a
building and flash their little badges and start shouting they're
the police and don't move and get my i.d. out, all this. So I says
I haven't got it with me, and one of 'em says, 'Where ya goin?'
'Home.'
'What's in the bag?'
'Bumwad,' I tell 'im, and he gets pissed and says 'Open it up,' and
I get pissed cause I haven't done dick, so I says, 'How come?' and
he says, 'Open it or we'll take ya in for a warrant.'
'Take me in,' I says. So they take me over to the baconbarn on
Morningside and they put me in this little room with my bag, and I
sit there for two hours, and I know they're watchin me cause
there's this little window in the wall, right? And all this time
all I'm thinkin is how pissed my old man's gonna be cause he sent
me for arsewipe cause he's gotta go and there's none in the house
and this is two hours ago, right? So I walk out and I say to the
guy at the desk, 'Can I phone my old man?' And he says, 'Get back
in there!' And they lock the door this time. So after a while two
other guys come in, and they figure they've got some needlejammer
or something. And they show me this piece of paper and say, 'Give
us the bag, son   hand it over.' So they open it up and pull out a
four-pack of arsewipe, and they stand there starin at it and feelin
it and lookin back in the bag   real fungus heads. So they leave me
there, and about an hour later one of 'em comes back and he's gonna
drive me home and I says 'Where's my bag, sir?' and he says, 'We're
keepin it till tomorrow,' they're arresting my arsewipe! And when
I get home my old man's fried cause I haven't got the stuff and
it's midnight and he had to use newspaper or something. Course he
doesn't believe me about the cops till the next day when a cop
shows up at the door and hands him the arsewipe and says, 'I hope
we didn't cause any inconvenience, sir,' and my old man yells, 'Not
unless you call draggin the Toronto Star across your slot an
inconvenience! Why didn't you just keep Norman and send me my
toilet paper?'"
What really irks Bruno about Norman is not this sort of thing or
his music or anything of the sort, but his women, or at least his
talk of them. He claims to have four or five on the string, tends
to them like a trapline when he's not practising with his band,
which he claims is on the verge of a "major breakout." Bruno
doesn't see that a pimply teenager has any right to be getting laid
when he's not. Especially on four or five fronts.
Then one morning in mid-July Bruno himself walks into work dripping
smugness and can't get me aside fast enough to tell me that he
himself has bedded a real live woman with real eyes and ears,
flesh-covered limbs and a genuine functioning pelvis   a miracle
woman, in short. Apparently she's a friend of his sister's, an
academic of some sort, in town from Montreal.
On Friday afternoon she and the sister drive into the cemetery in
the friend's car to pick up Bruno. He wants me to meet them, and as
I approach the car I'm impressed to see a pair of elegant Italians
with wide smiles and big white teeth. They appear to be in their
late twenties. Like Bruno, the friend has a literary bent and is
immediately abuzz about the graveyard as a literary item. We're all
attention, pitching in with a yard or two of polysyllabic
foolishness of our own.
We work it out that I'll meet them downtown for dinner, which turns
out to be a gassy affair with a lot of cheap wine and hyper
conversation. Bruno's friend is a big talker, and the drunker she
gets the more she dominates the table. At one point, she says
loudly (silencing the restaurant), "If Sartre had bothered to read
Kierkegaard, he'd never have written a word!"
"How so?" says Bruno softly.
"He'd have realized that man and his soul are not inextricably
tied! They're not a single entity!"
Bruno takes a long pull on a bottle of beer. "Knock, knock," he
says to no one in particular.
"Who's there?" she grins, but before Bruno can complete the joke
his innards erupt in a thunderous burp that goes through several
increments of ascending pitch before arresting itself in a gurgling
snap at the back of his throat. "Excuse me," he whispers and slips
off to the washroom, reappearing minutes later with a plate-sized
water stain across the front of his shirt.
When the meal is over, they all want to go to the Colonial to see
Nat Adderley. Then Lucy, Bruno's sister, decides she'd rather go
home, and I'm quick to offer a ride.
Away from the others she's more talkative and, as we walk to the
car, she asks me about Bruno, in particular about working with him.
She volunteers that she doesn't think he'd have lasted at the
cemetery if it weren't for me.
The remark catches me off guard. "It was a long winter," she says,
"off for work before it was light, not getting home until after
dark." She goes on to describe how night after night Bruno would
fall into bed exhausted immediately after supper, and how he seldom
left the apartment except to go to work or, occasionally, the
library. "He'd read all weekend. Half a dozen books!"
We go roaring up the Don Valley Parkway and in no time are sitting
in front of a late-fifties three-storey walk-up in North York.
"The thing you have to understand about Bruno," says Lucy, "is that
he's very proud   things are difficult for him right now. He'd
never work like this back home." The catch, she explains, is that
he's also too proud to be broke   or to go home without making
something of himself in the wide world.
I ask about the job at Imperial, and she says, "He sent out
fifty-some r‚sum‚s last winter   I know, I typed the envelopes. He
gets the interviews, he just doesn't get the jobs. Something about
him puts people off."
Although I hesitate to say so, I know exactly what that something
is: Bruno is too big, too bright, too confident, too loud, too
Italian, entirely too much for the confinements of the corporate
office. And the people who might hire him can smell it on him the
moment he comes through the door. In a purely literary sense, he's
perfect for the work he's doing now. Unfortunately, a literary
appropriateness to gravedigging is no way to get on in the world.
"How old is Bruno?" it occurs to me to ask.
"Thirty-three." She looks at me squarely and says, "How old are
you?"
"Twenty-two."
"Twenty-two," she nods, smiling. "How old do you think I am?"
I look at her for a second. "Twenty-five?"
"You're a diplomat," she says. "Do you have a girlfriend, Charles?"
Unsure what the preferred answer is, I go with the unadorned truth:
no
at least not at the moment.
By this time the night air has grown cool. A crisp quarter moon
hangs like a flaying knife above Avenue Road.
Before getting out she leans across and gives me a gentle kiss on
the cheek   a kiss that is at once patronizing, affectionate,
stirring, memorable, forgettable. She thanks me for the lift and
gives me a brief pat on the knee, a gesture that I promptly return,
resisting a fierce temptation to slide my hand upward along her
thigh. "Come for dinner sometime," she says as she gets out.
"Invite me," I tell her, and within minutes I'm tearing along 401,
fantasies brimming, brain astir. A hard warm wind swirls around the
cockpit of my car.

                           ------------

The following morning I am joined in my grass-clipping by a couple of
Newfoundlanders, brothers, who've stopped in by chance and gotten
hired on probation. Probation is an attractive concept to Scotty
(he pronounces the word as if it had three or four "r's"). If he
finds a superior worker he can always keep him on. If not, he has
the gustatory pleasure of chewing him out, humiliating him as
deeply as possible, then firing him. On the other hand, the
unfettered employee gains the unique opportunity to tell Scotty to
his face what an obnoxious old fart he is.
Before any new employee begins work he must be primed of course.
This includes a rare invitation to Scotty's upstairs office, an
airless little closet crammed with garden catalogues,
burial-equipment brochures and bristling tabloids. Here Scotty
delivers his unassailable code of cemetery conduct: "We stairt at
eight o'clock around here not ten after not fave after, from eight
in the mairning to fave in the afternewn I demand turtle
concentration on wark, if a funeral comes in get the hell outa
there, I won't tollerate any interference with the berreaved, if ya
finish a job ya don't sit on yer airse ya come and ask me for
another one, if I'm not around ya trim grass around the stewnes,
they always need it, I allow fave minutes a day in the shithouse
that's all, if I hafta reprimand ya I mark it down, three times and
it's the sack, all ya hafta do to get along with me is remember one
thing I'm the boss not the Wop not the Dutchman or anybody else, if
ya take things into your own hands you're on your way, we pay every
second Fraiday, yer pay's 2-R-G under the union agraiment, now get
the hell out there and get to wark."

For the first couple of hours, the brothers are feverishly
energetic, leaping around like the crabs, chattering about how much
they can drink, how much their new jobs mean to them, about their
big plans for Toronto   they want to know how fast I figure they
can get to be full gravediggers, into the bigger money and all.
"How much do you make?" one of them asks.
"About a dime more than you do."
He nods soberly, his assumption confirmed that the big money lies
just around the corner.
But their enthusiasm is mostly talk, and by late morning the
malaise of the place has gotten to them and they've begun to goof
off. One of them goes to sleep at lunch and it takes the other the
better part of thirty seconds, prodding and jostling him, just to
get him to open his eyes. "Waark don't appale to 'im," he says,
grinning at several of us, including Norman, who is respectfully
impressed to discover people even less inclined to grunt-labour
than he is.
On the way out to the Apostles' Garden I ask the brothers what part
of Newfoundland they're from. One says Cornerbrook, the other the
name of some obscure fishing port, Lapstrake Tongue or something.
"It's nare Karnerbrook," says the first.
"It's nowhere nare Karnerbrook."
"It is nare Karnerbrook!"
"It ain't!"
"Bullshitter!"
"You call me a bullshitter, I'll tear your face off."
"I just called you one   tear it off, c'mon, tear it off, tear my
face off, I want you to tear it off."
"Don't make me, John."
"C'mon do it, I want ya to do it!"
The argument continues until neither of them has the energy to
sustain it, and we get into the afternoon's work, repairing
"sinkers," old graves whose wooden rough boxes and contents have
rotted over the years and caved in, leaving a four- or five-inch
(or, occasionally, deeper) concavity in the lawn. Sinkers can
appear either gradually or suddenly after a heavy rain, the weight
of extra water in the soil driving everything down. Peter tells me
he was once standing on a grave when it dropped. He also tells me
about a man and wife, buried beside one another, whose graves
collapsed at exactly the same time, though they were buried ten
years apart. For repairs you peel back the sod, add top soil, then
put the sod back in place. But even with this simple task there are
right and wrong manoeuvres that Scotty loves to expound upon: for
a five-inch sinker you add not five inches but SIX inches of soil,
understand, boy, SIX inches so that when the soil settles you're
dead level and get no complaints, understand?
The brothers approach the work with competitive ferocity, tearing
the first grave into a hundred divots, then piling up the soil so
unevenly they have to pound the grave with a shovel to even it out.
"How many'a these we gotta do?" one of them asks, and I tell him
about a dozen and end up doing a good part of the work myself.
By the middle of the next day Scotty has hounded them so
relentlessly they've quit without drawing any pay, leaving Scotty
with tasty new meat for his insatiable bigotry and small-
mindedness. "Gawdam Newfie fishermen," he mutters as we come in at
quitting time. "Waste of a good pinkslip. Worse than the Wops," he
says loudly so Bruno will hear.
"The Wops have produced the greatest art in the world!" shouts
Bruno.
"And how much of it did you produce?"
"What have the Scotch done lately?"
"Scotch is a drrrrink, ya prrrick!"
Within seconds Bruno has punched his time card and is out the door
on his way. But Scotty cannot leave it and follows him out
shouting, "Name me the rrrivers of Canada! Go on, name them! Name
me the rivers of Canada! C'mon, name them! Name the rivers! ...
MacKenzie! ... Frrraser! ... Thompson! ... Selkirrrk! ... All
Scotsmen, because the Scots opened this fuckin country up and did
more for it than anybody else including the English, especially the
English. Name me the first prime minister! Go on, ya prrrick!"
By now Bruno is vaulting across the lawn toward the bus stop,
Scotty shouting futilely behind him, then falling silent. Having
stood for a moment, he walks slowly back to the shop, his brain
torn somewhere between his ignorant Glaswegian pride and a hundred
other horrors of his alcoholic existence.
As I leave the shop he says to me in a voice that seems to come not
from his voicebox but from the deepest recesses of his carcass,
"That boy ain't gonna last long around here, ya get them clippers
sharpened?"
"First thing in the morning," I tell him, but the answer is lost on
him, as he's already on his oblivious way up the stairs, baggy
pants flapping, gray fedora pulled low on his forehead. He glares
down briefly through the little rat sunglasses he always wears in
the afternoon, then disappears into his o4fice. He reappears and
calls, "Ya get them clippers sharpened?"
"Tomorrow," I tell him, and his grandson David who is cleaning up
the shop smiles at me half-apologetically. David is sixteen, shy,
and constantly caught between his obligatory allegiance to his
grandfather, without whom he wouldn't have a job, and his
allegiance to the other employees with whom he spends most of his
work time and whom he likes. He's so frightened of his grandfather
that, once when he'd knocked over a little wisteria bush on the
tractor, he came to me with tears in his eyes pleading that I tell
Scotty I'd done it, which I did, touching off a predictable stream
of profanity and threats.
David is a willing source of information and one day tells me all
about his grandmother, Scotty's wife, who lies home all day in bed,
dying of some difficult disease for which he doesn't know the name.
"Something to do with her kidneys," he says. "She's got tubes all
over the place." She is Scotty's wife of forty years, the two of
them having come from Glascow as bride and groom during the
thirties, shiny with optimism for the New World. Now Scotty drives
home at noon to heat soup for her and make sad little bird meals
and tend to her catheter. In the evening they sit together and
watch television and read the National Enquirer and the News of the
World. Scotty, according to his grandson, doesn't drink at home in
deference to his wife    doesn't even keep a bottle.
Scotty himself says very little of his life, except for occasional
references to his early years at the cemetery when he dug graves
with a pick and shovel, brutal work which he exults in recalling,
comparing it at every opportunity to our own puffball labours.
Naturally nobody pays any attention to his comparisons till one day
in early June when, after two or three days of rain, the entire
cemetery is so sodden that the backhoe with which the graves are
dug can't be driven into the Garden of Christus without cutting
eight-inch ruts in the turf. At eight a.m. sharp Scotty descends
the stairs in his ratglasses and lugubrious black raincoat to
announce that we're going to have to dig a grave by hand. He is
ecstatic. Since Bruno and I are non-union and unlikely to raise a
stink over slave labour we are assigned the job.
In rubber boots and the bright yellow raincoats issued by the
cemetery we choose an assortment of digging implements, pile them
in a wheelbarrow, and shamble off in the rain to locate the plot.
This done, we retire to a grove of crabapple trees where Bruno
rolls a tight little reefer to properly prepare us for the work.
We fritter our way through half an hour of unproductivity before
things begin to get serious and we run into roots which we have to
chop, mud flying, sweat pouring; and by ten o'clock the dope has
begun to wear off and we're all of eighteen inches into the ground.
The wet earth is as heavy as potter's clay. Just before break,
Scotty comes out, and he and Bruno dissolve into a hateful shouting
match, which culminates with Bruno demanding that Scotty assign us
some help.
"I'll send Fred," Scotty sniffs.
"Fred!" cries Bruno. "What good's Fred gonna do?"
"He can keep the place clean, sweep it up."
"We need a digger, not a janitor! Give us Norman!"
"Norman who?"
"Norman!" yells Bruno. "He's been here six weeks! You hired him!"
"Ya ya he's busy. He's no good anyway."
"He can dig!" hollers Bruno.
Twenty minutes later Fred and Norman both show up, Norman wearing
a little peakless welder's hat which accentuates his resemblance to
a rodent. Fred looks like an old woman and, for once, doesn't seem
at all enthusiastic about work. He has a knot the size of a
five-pin ball tied in the free arm of his raincoat.
"So whaddaya want us to do?" says Norman.
"Oh, just stand there," says Bruno. "Too bad you don't have your
guitar    get a shovel for fucksake!"
Since there's only so much room in the grave to swing a shovel, we
work out a system whereby each of us takes a turn digging furiously
for three or four minutes until our arms and shoulders won't
function anymore, then crawling out and letting the next man in.
While he's not digging, Norman lurches around in a kind of duck
walk, solemnly miming Jimmi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or whatever
other guitarist happens to be on his brain. Fred fusses around with
a broom for a few minutes then disappears silently into the mists.
By the time we're four feet down we've caught up with the swollen
water table and are actually digging under water. Scotty comes out
just before lunch and is outraged to see a foot of muddy slop in
the bottom of the grave. But his outrage turns quickly to
pragmatism, intense consideration of the problem. Unlike most of
his inflated woes, this is serious business. For one thing, it is
against the law to bury a person under water. Scotty's respect for
the law, albeit, is small compared to his fear that a waterlogged
grave   a "slurpee" as Peter calls it   could be bad for business.
Word could get around. More immediately, there is the problem of
the mourners, who will be arriving shortly, and who will hardly be
comforted to see their beloved lowered into a hundred-odd gallons
of cocoa-brown swill.
"The pump," grunts Scotty. "The pump. We'll use the pump." He keeps
an ancient Briggs and Stratton gasoline-powered water pump, a
sputtering antique contraption, beneath the stairs to his office.
It is one of his fondest possessions, and he has maintained it
obsessively for nearly four decades, tuned it and polished it and
oiled it to the point where it has become for him a kind of fatted
calf, to be brought out only for the most significant occasions
such as a potential loss of business.
Peter is summoned and, within minutes, has delivered the senile old
thing to the gravesite. A dozen or so tugs on the starter cord
produce a few clicks and pops of the engine. These graduate to
occasional belches, then suddenly to an explosion of blue smoke as
the pump roars to life with the fury of an unmuffled road hog.
"Yeeeaaahhh!" screams Norman, and he winces into a contorted riff
on his imaginary guitar, then goes lurching across the lawn in a
Chuck Berry duck walk.
Bruno throws the intake pipe into the grave, and I drag the outlet
hose a hundred feet or so across the lawn. Even before I set it
down it is puking muddy grey water.
Within minutes the grave is dry, and we are back at our digging.
But as usual at the graveyard, one set of problems has been
directly succeeded by another. The latest concern is that, to keep
the grave dry, the pump, with its billowing effusions of exhaust,
will have to be left running until the funeral arrives after lunch.
By that time, the entire west side of the cemetery, a massive
topographical sump, will be a consuming haze of toxic exhaust
smoke. The rain and humidity are keeping the fumes earthbound, and
there isn't a puff of wind to blow them away. Even now, we can
barely breathe as we dig.
By the time we finish the work and trundle off for lunch, a
fountain of nausea is rising in my guts and throat. Norman has a
headache, and Bruno is complaining that if he doesn't get a toke
posthaste he's going to pass out. He heads off on his own to take
the cure.
Because it's near the end of a pay period and I'm running out of
money, I've forsworn restaurants for the day and have brought my
lunch to work. In the rain, there is nowhere to eat it but in the
windowless plywood shed where we leave our work clothes at night.
The place has all the charm of prison solitary   one 60-watt bulb
hanging from a wire, a few battered lockers, two long benches along
the walls and, in the middle of the room, a cut-down coffin crate
which serves as a table. On one wall is a faded magazine photo of
a naked woman with breasts the size of roasting fowl. The place is
never cleaned and has no ventilation, so that most of the time it
smells like a monkey cage. Beside one of the wall studs, in
ballpoint pen, is the neat, almost calligraphic, inscription: "The
Alexander 'Scotty' McKinnon Memorial Hall."
Removing my lunch from its bag does nothing to ease my nausea
four peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the bananas pasty and
brown, the bread compressed to the consistency of communion wafers.
Everybody else's lunch is just as bad. Fred has a good-sized
cooking onion and is eating it like an apple. Afterwards, he'll
bring out a few slices of bread and spread them with bacon
drippings and make tomato sandwiches of them. He often brings half
a dozen garlic cloves, pops them into his mouth, and chews them up
like Smarties. Bert the Belgian has a shapeless wad of bread
pudding. He plucks little morsels off it with his dirty fingers,
dips them in an unlabled bottle of yellow jam and tosses them into
his mouth. He washes everything down with cold tea sucked directly
from the neck of an old orange juice bottle.
The only person who has anything like an appetizing meal is Peter,
whose wife packs his lunch for him. Today he has several thick
slices of ham, a chunk of gouda cheese, a tomato or two, carrot
sticks, green pepper wedges, and a half dozen slices of sour-dough
rye. On Fridays he generally brings a whole barbecued chicken and
devours it himself.
When he's finished eating, Fred disappears out into the rain to
perform some shadowy task endemic to his shadowy existence. He is
a phenomenon, a mole, operating entirely beneath and beyond the
rest of us   beyond everyone and everything, in fact: statistics,
law, politics, government, advertising; beyond the issues of the
day and even of the graveyard. He goes about his business attuned
only to some mysterious cadence in his head   and of course to his
peonies and roses, to when they pollinate and when they bloom, what
aids them and what ails them.
Meanwhile, Norman and I slump down in the corners of the change
room to catch a few winks, while several of the others take out a
deck of cards and begin a joyless game of poker beneath the 60-watt
bulb.
By the end of lunch hour, Scotty has devised a signal system that
will enable us to pull the pump from the grave at the last possible
instant before the funeral arrives. He himself will stand at the
front gate to the cemetery, Peter on a hill a hundred yards or so
from the grave. At the instant Scotty sees the hearse coming down
Kingston Road, he'll wave to Peter who'll wave to Bruno, who will
shut off the pump and drag it out of sight. The plan is explained
to us as if it were a complex military maneuvre that would affect
the fate of continents.
When the signal comes we remove the pump and drag it uphill into
the crabapple trees, quickly gathering up the hose. The mourners
appear, taking their places at graveside, more than a few of them
mugging and muttering over the impressive blue smog that surrounds
them. In the distance, we can hear
their periodic coughs. The entire unhealthy scene, with its diffuse
light and uncertain imagery, suggests a Turner seascape.
As the service proceeds, Scotty takes the undertaker aside and
warns him that the coffin must not be lowered   absolutely,
positively   until after the mourners have gone. There is no
question that he'll be heeded; Scotty gets far more respect from
the undertakers than he gets from his own employees. Unlike us,
they need him, are utterly dependent on him to make sure that
graves are dug on time and are properly laid out, that canopies and
folding chairs are at graveside, that there's someone waiting at
the cemetery gates, usually Scotty himself, to lead their funerals
to the proper gravesites   a significant service in a cemetery of
more than eighty-thousand graves. In return for his attentions, the
undertakers reimburse him at Christmas by discreetly delivering to
the cemetery case upon case of his particular brand of high-octane
psycho-damage-control potion, Cutty Sark Scotch Whisky, the ideal
hedge against reality, at least so far as Scotty is concerned.
Twenty-odd cases of it a year roll in, one from each of the funeral
homes in central and east-end Toronto. Cutty Sark and Cutty Sark
only   Scotty deems the purity of his blood-alcohol system to be
sacrosanct. Apparently, a few years earlier a young undertaker from
an upstart funeral home delivered a festively wrapped case of some
other brand of Scotch to the cemetery on Christmas Eve. Before he'd
handed over his offering, or had said even as much as Merry
Christmas, Scotty espied a slight irregularity in the dimensions of
the carton and ordered the young man back to the liquor store. His
Christmas riches yield a bottle for every work day of the year.

As always, when the mourners are safely in their cars and on their
way, we return to the grave and unlatch the lowering frame. The
coffin descends smoothly for a couple of feet and comes bobbing to
rest, gently afloat on the rising tide of ground water.
We reactivate the pump, and in no time the coffin is on solid
ground   terra firma finale.
"Fill it in!" yells Scotty, as he totters across the lawn toward
the grave. "It's not gonna fill itself!"
Bruno takes a couple of steps toward him and says softly, "That's
an untenable philosophic assumption, Scotty   it's unworthy of you.
Just because no other grave has ever filled itself doesn't mean
this one won't. The laws of science and nature are empirical,
certainly not inviolate."
Scotty stops two feet in front of him, glaring at him as if at an
escaped gorilla.
"The only way we can test the assumption is to leave the grave open
and see if it fills itself," says Bruno. "At this point we have no
hard evidence that it won't."
Scotty teeters momentarily and a curtain of malice descends over
his face. "When you write your will," he sputters, "put it down
that you'd like precisely that assumption tested on your grave. In
the meantime, get this one filled in or you've got yer pinkslip."
Well pleased with his rejoinder, he slouches off in the direction
of the crabapple trees, homing in on his beloved water pump.

The Authors

NANCY BJORGO has evolved from hobby farmer to visual artist to writer in
her twenty-five years in the Lakehead. In addition, she has been a
teacher for twelve years and currently teaches English at St. Ignatius
High School. Nancy is a member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild. She and
her husband live on a former homestead west of Thunder Bay. They have
two sons.

DOROTHY COLBY writes both fiction and non-fiction, and her work has
appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. She is a founding member
of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild. Dorothy is married, has three sons and
two grandchildren.

COLLEEN DAVEY grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, and has lived in Thunder Bay
for most of the past twenty years. She is a recent graduate of the
Lakehead University School of Education. She describes herself as an
on-again, off-again writer.

MARY FROST was born in Cork, Ireland, and is a graduate of the
University of Ireland. For the past sixteen years she has lived in
Thunder Bay, where she is a member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild and
the Poetry Workshop. Her poetry has been published both in Canada and in
Ireland.

HAZEL FULFORD is a member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild and a
graduate of Lakehead University. Her book, When Trains Stopped in
Dinorwic, was published in 1990, and she is completing a history of the
gold rush at Gold Rock and Wabigoon. She and her husband have two
daughters, six grandchildren and one great-grandson.

JOHN FUTHEY grew up in Chapleau, Ontario, where his father's family
settled with the building of the CPR. Since 1964, he has been a
professor of English Literature at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.
He takes pleasure in music, antiques, gardening, and spurts of writing
prose and poetry.

PARRY HARNDEN is a very private person.

MARIANNE JONES lives with her husband Reg at One Island Lake outside
Thunder Bay. She divides her time between teaching, music, acting, and
writing. She has two grown daughters, Jennifer and Maureen.

BILL MacDONALD was born in Fort William and, except for three years in
remote Arctic weather stations and a year at the Sorbonne, is a
life-long resident of Thunder Bay. He has published four collections of
short fiction, two books about Silver Islet, and a Great Lakes odyssey.
His work has appeared in Lake Superior Magazine. His forthcoming book of
short stories is entitled Requiem for Aunt Rose.

JAKE MacDONALD is a full-time writer of fiction, drama, and journalism.
His four books of fiction focus on the landscapes and people of the
Minaki-Kenora area, where he lives for most of the year. During the
summer, he works part-time as a fishing guide.

JOAN MAITLAND grew up in Winnipeg and moved to Thunder Bay with her
husband Don in 1976. She was a member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild,
and her writing credits include first prize in the Kam Theatre Short
Story Contest in 1988. Her story, "Thursday," was presented on CBC Radio
in 1993. She died in July 1994 and is fondly remembered by her friends
in the writing community.

ROSALIND MAKI writes short fiction. Her story, "Living by the Sea,"
recently won the Okanagan Award and will be published in Canadian Author
sometime next year. She is married, with three children, and lives in
Kaministiquia.

PATRICK McLEOD was born and raised in Northwestern Ontario and lives in
suburban Thunder Bay with his wife Denise and their two sons. He started
writing in 1983 and concentrates his efforts on short stories with
horror/suspense themes. He enjoys the outdoors, hunting and fishing.

JOHN PRINGLE lives in Atikokan where he works as a forestry technician.
He has been writing short fiction for the past ten years and has
recently completed a novel. He dedicates "The White Boat" to the memory
of Lydia Kutra - for her determination, love and courage.

SHARON RANTALA lives with her husband Erick - both are purebread
Finlanders - in what was once her grandparents' farmhouse in McKenzie. A
member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild, she has experimented with many
genres, including fantasy, pioneer, and Christian fiction, but her
prevailing interest lies in what she calls "the profound daze of youth."

JOAN SKELTON is an expatriate Torontonian whose fiction, essays and
journalism have appeared in numerous North American publications. She is
the author of three novels, the second of which, The Survivor of the
Edmund Fitzgerald, was well received by readers and critics, including
the late Northrop Frye.

TESSA SODERBERG is a graduate of the social sciences program at McMaster
University. In addition to writing short stories, she is currently
working on a novel about the aftermath of a nuclear war. She does all
her writing on computers with special voice packages and visual
enhancement for large print. She lives in Thunder Bay with her canoeing
companion, one dog, two cats and fifty house plants.

KAREN KEELEY WIEBE grew up in Vancouver, B.C., and had lived in Southern
Ontario and in Calgary before moving to Thunder Bay with her family four
years ago. A member of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild, she is a prolific
writer of both short and long fiction. In 1993 her story, "White Horse
in a Snowstorm," won first prize in The Chronicle-Journal Short Story
Contest.

CHARLES WILKINS is the author of seven books, including Paddle to the
Amazon and After the Applause. He is married, with two children, and has
made Thunder Bay his home since completing his tenure as
writer-in-residence at the Thunder Bay Public Library. "The
Gravediggers" recalls a summer he spent working in a large Toronto
cemetery.