The Heart of The Season

From high above the field, we see two long lines snaking across the expanse. As we drop towards the earth, movement catches our eye and we follow one of them as he starts across the divide. The waiting team roars its challenge and our man picks up speed. His head is down and his arms are pumping air as he lunges forward and with an explosion of cries from the defenders he slams into their ranks and tears open a hole in the defenses. There is one voice above the others, calling for more strength as our man brings one of them back across the field and the line is set for another attack. Red Rover, Red Rover.

"I fell out of a tree."
"What were you doing in a tree?"
"Climbing."
"That doesn't sound like a very smart idea."
"Its fun."
"Well, look what having fun gets you."

He rocked forward on his heels, balancing in a squat, waiting, as the water cleared, the sand settled and he could make out the waving strands of its feelers. They pinched, if you weren't careful. He'd never eaten one before, his mother always looked into the pail and told him to put them back in the creek. It was never about eating them. It was about catching them.

"We could make a pie.", he looked at me like I was from another planet. It just didn't seem worth it to me. The bushes were so dense and the thorns, when they scratched you, left welts that hurt for days. The seeds stuck your teeth and you could feel them every time you closed your mouth.
"You don't know how to make a pie.", I said. I left him there, scrabbling across the rocky ground and decided to go home and turn on the sprinkler. Sometimes it was the only thing that could take the sting out of the sun, especially on days like this. I'm going to ask for a kite for my birthday. I saw a cool one in the window at the hardware store. It was a box kite and has two handles to control it.
"Hey, wait up."

The door creaked open and it woke him up. He could hear that it was raining outside and there was a familiar rumble in the distance. He asked if it was coming this way and she answered that she thought so. When he opened the porch door, everyone was there, wearing their pajamas; his mother wrapped in a long housecoat with the tie trailing behind her. The dog was so terrified that she had to let him back into the house and he went to find some place he could hide. As he sat down on the veranda the sky flashed silently and they started to count in unison. "One, two, three...", and the sound reached them, subdued and gentle. It was closer that time. The breeze picked up the scent of the lilacs and brushed past them and they all lifted their heads to take in the smell. He kicked his legs and started to swing them over the edge and then the sky lit up again. "One, two, three..."

The Sinking Sun

The cat is crackling like a fenced off hydro station. Despite the steady hum of the humidifier the place is as dry as dust and the microfibre couch is only exacerbating the problem.

The world can seem like anything you want it to be before anyone is up. The quiet streets don't give you any sort of impression about the type of day it will be and the lack of pedestrians just means that if I wanted to I could have some time alone with the universe. It could seem like a happy place, full of potential, or it could seem to be a bleak and empty place, cold and without anything important to say.

I got to the pick-up point first, yesterday, but I still didn't get picked. The employers don't know how eager you are and don't know how hungry you are and don't care that you thought it would make a difference to be early. They just look at you, standing like sheep ready for shearing, uncertain and hoping they mean well. I'm a little old for this and I guess that's why I don't get picked much. Sometimes, if I don't get picked, I trudge home and sip some weak coffee until about nine and if I'm lucky the temp office will phone and there will be some cleaning or some deliveries to do. I have an appointment later this week at the grocery store for a job in the receiving department. It only pays seven dollars an hour but at least its steady.

I've been wondering if I should move up into the city. One of the guys I worked with last week used to rent a room in a house downtown and he said he only paid three hundred dollars a month for it. You don't get much with it but I don't need much, really. What I do need is more opportunities.

I guess I don't need to be up so early, either. Its nice, though, out here at this time. So quiet I can hear the traffic from the highway two miles away. I can imagine the people who are filling it full, driving with an intent, into the heart of the city, with a self reliance that must feel good. They wake up every morning knowing they're needed and that they're good at what they do. Packing a lunch and being early to work, just to straighten the desk and get a coffee before they sit down to decide what needs to done first. Maybe they make a spreadsheet and then call a few clients, schedule a meeting or two and then they get together with a few people for lunch at the restaurant on the corner. Driving home, they curse the traffic and the sinking sun as it blinds them, but when they pull into the driveway and see the kids playing soccer with some friends, in the yard, they understand why they do it and feel a sense of accomplishment.

The cat is happy to see me. I think he gets bored here, by himself all day. He's still trying to dig his toy out from under the cushion. He gets so wound up by the stupid thing. He doesn't know and probably wouldn't care, even if he did know, about the shock he's going to get when he touches his nose to the fridge door as I open it for the milk. Sometimes its better not to know. I think that, when I die, I want to come back as a cat.

From Dawn Till Dusk

Things in motion sooner catch the eye that what not stirs.

This from Shakespeare, a warning that has stood the test of time. From Troilus and Cressida, the expression was used to mock our preferences for the latest fad, something which hasn't changed. The entirety of twentieth century innovation, beginning with the industrial revolution, has turned us from bedpans to Intel chips in less than one hundred years and will inevitably make the world as foreign on our deathbeds as it was at our birthing.

I remember talking to my grandfather, once, about what it was like to not have an indoor toilet, when my mother chirped up and told me that she didn't have one until she was married. This is akin to explaining to a fifteen year old that my high school computer class consisted of learning how to properly punch the cards and receiving a blank stare in return. Consider this, however. One of the great cornerstones of psychology, attributed to Freud, was a death fixation. The fear of death was once the hallmark of the modern man. It drove, unconsciously, our desires and provoked some astounding defeats in the minds of many, but I would like to introduce the fear of the future as a more relevant theme to describe symptoms visible everywhere in society today. Isn't it apparent to you that if you don't keep up on the fads that you will simply become irrelevant and probably by next week? Assuming I live another forty years, its likely I won't be able to recognize the world I grew up in unless I spend all my time at the forefront of the developments in science and technology, biophysics and genetics. Sadly its an uphill battle that's already casting victims to the wayside. Look around you and it won't take long to identify someone to whom the world is already a strange and foreign place.

Take solace, however, in the notion that while we have spent a ridiculous amount of time, money and effort in some areas, to our advancement, there are some things that have been overlooked and ignored. While I can cart around a stunningly small computer, instantly connected to the entire world without flares, a telegraph machine or hundreds of miles of cables I still can't find a car that will take me there that doesn't use the combustion engine or fossil fuels. I can point a card at a machine, buying and selling, identify myself without opening my mouth and hand pick the familial qualities I would like to see in future generations but I can't find a light bulb that will last longer than a couple of months. There are rockets, satellites, telescopes pointed at everything in the known galaxy and yet the woman who lives across the street from me can't survive unless she cuts every coupon she can find and still has a decent meal only once a month. How many ring tones do I need for my cell phone when across the city thousands of people a year slip into the anonymity of obsolescence, many of them in my own family.

There is a nineteenth century expression which describes someone who has faded into the background and while we will certainly live longer than our forefathers did, the most of us will have to adjust to life "on the shady side of forty." Suffice it to say that I no longer include my computer programming course on my resume as when I am asked to demonstrate my ability I can no longer find the slot to put the card into and all that howling laughter is just too distracting for accurate punching.

Wire Walk

From the first time Willard Florentine punched a hole in a coke can and tied them to his feet with binder twine he sensed something of the divine in his vertical intentions. It was as if God was clapping him on the back and wishing him well in his attempts to reach heaven and from then on Willard knew no peace.
The ease with which he navigated great heights, starting with the home made high wire, stretched from the corner of the house to the shed in the back yard, all the way to the infamous walk across the Danube in '69, reinforced his belief that God approved of his attempts to reach heaven by his circuitous route instead of the way you or I would do it. In the end he reached it, one would hope, but not by using the same method that's been so popular since mankind sprouted from the primordial soup.
The Blue River Gorge stunt took us two years to organize and was the most ambitious high wire walk that had ever been attempted to that date. The press tour was impressive and we hit 14 countries inside of two weeks to promote it. Willard was the only true Florentine in the Flying Florentines by that point after his brother Lars had been killed walking the wire in Rio in 1970. That spectacular fall had been captured on live television and broadcast all around the world. Willard had been philosophical about it, though, and insisted that the team be re-built and had personally trained and instructed Lars' replacement in the troupe only to have him die in the 1972 walk, which was on a wire suspended between two World War 1 bi-planes over the desert in Nevada.
The Blue River Gorge was going to be Willard's final walk and I guess it was, either way you slice it. His plan was to retire after going out in spectacular fashion. As a tribute to the great man, most of the old crew had assembled again, despite our unanimous decision to quit after the bi-plane episode. There was simply no way to refuse Willard's pleas, no way to deride his expectation that God would one day allow him to walk the wire straight through St. Peter's gate. And so we gathered three weeks before the event and the technical crews began the laborious process of stringing the wire across the gorge. I was there, of course, supervising the job, but Willard came by almost every two days to check the specs and to give the workers a glimpse at what they thought must be the craziest man alive.
The day came and with the camera crews and international journalists, the world came as well. Willard was in good spirits and insisted that the show start at exactly 1 p.m., the time advertised and he hounded the crew into performance mode. As the clock struck one he stepped out over the gorge and began his descent. I saw what I saw and I won't be convinced otherwise. As Willard reached the half way point he threw away the balance pole and stepped out into the air. I've seen the footage and it appears that he slipped and fell seven hundred feet into the rushing waters of the Blue River, but that's not what I saw. To my eyes he simply stepped from one wire, the solid one I had stretched across the gorge myself, onto another wire that rose slowly in a gentle arc to disappear into the clouds. As the spectators screamed and began to rush in circles, not knowing what should done, and the rescue teams at the bottom of the gorge jumped into action, I watched Willard, who just before he disappeared into the sky, turned and with a wave and a smile of satisfaction nearly too big for his face faded into a cloud and was gone.
I suppose its like that for some people. Not for me, though. That passion, that focus, that determination is something that I just don't possess and I think that what's necessary most in this life, if you hope to walk the wire through St. Peter's gate, is the belief that you were meant to from the very beginning.

The Wall of Death

"You sorry bastard. You couldn't tell a joke right if your life depended on it."
"And you wouldn't know a good joke if it bit you on the ass."

It would take them two hours to walk the mile from the hardware store to the coffee shop, arguing all the way about who was funnier or who was better looking, and they did it every day for nearly twelve years. When Murray died in June of last year I thought Bern would follow on his heels, cursing his friend all the way. I was more surprised than anyone when Bern announced he was moving to Florida. The two of them had struck me as a curiosity right from the beginning. Their friendship had evolved as an accident on the day they tried to buy the same hammer and fought over who had it in their hand first. They fought every day after that and when I said goodbye to Bern I asked him about Murray and he told he was happy the old bastard was gone. Now he could get on with things and leave this shit hole behind. The word curmudgeon describes both of them admirably.

Poor old Bern must have been pissed that he died before he could leave town and then found himself still here, walking up and down the same street over and over again with Murray. At first they scared the shit out of everyone in town, but after a few months we all got used to the decrepit swaggering of the two old ghosts who haunted the main street. I have to tell you it made me seriously question the existence of a benevolent God and I wondered where I might end up when I passed on. I asked my wife about that and she suggested that I'd likely end up somewhere in Thailand trying endlessly to buy pot from frightened locals. I don't get her sense of humour, sometimes.

It was a couple of days ago, now, that I got a glimpse into the great unknown. I was sitting on the step in front of my store, the hardware store, when they walked up and stopped in front of me. I was a little nervous because since they'd come back neither one of them seemed to take any notice of the real world going on around their run-on crackpot spook show. Now here they were, standing in front of me, looking at me and generally giving me the urge to shit myself. Then Murray coughed into his fist and said, "Hey there, Mike. We need you to give us a hand with something here." I just stared at him until he said, "Are you deaf, boy?" and I said, "Uh, sure Mur, what do you want to know?"

And this is it. It seemed that both Bern and Murray were well aware of their incorporeality and they'd decided that they'd had enough. They asked me if I knew anything about getting rid of ghosts, like maybe an exorcism or something. I said, "You want me to exorcise you off to heaven?", thinking it more likely they were headed in the other direction, and Bern said, "Yeah, like the priests used to do to get rid of demons and such." I asked them again, just to be sure that they knew what they were talking about and finally I agreed to ask my wife about it, since she was about the only person I thought I could trust not to laugh in my face. She did laugh in my face until I took her down the street to talk to the two old coots and they confirmed the story again and told us to hop to it. Apparently they weren't getting along any better dead than they had when they were alive. The first person we recruited was, of course, Father Bleary, mainly because he was the priest at the church on second avenue and because he, more than anyone, was bothered by the swearing up and down the streets at all hours of the day. When he'd done some brushing up on how to send a couple of lost souls home he had us all gather in the back room of the hardware store. That was where they'd started their unholy friendship and Father Bleary figured that this was where it should end.

It was kind of touching, in a way, when they took one last look at each other and said, "See you around, shithead.", and the other said, "Not if I see you first." Father Bleary was wandering around shaking his incense holder and stinking up the store and my wife was splashing holy water on everything and I sat there, a little wild eyed, as we prepared to send them packing. As Father Bleary's chanting grew louder and louder the two old farts seemed to waver in and out of focus and then as they faded out for good with my wife crying and yelling her goodbyes, I realized that the place wasn't going to be the same without them. I actually got a little choked up at that point but then it was over and the three of us stood there for a while looking at each other and wondering if things could get any stranger in this town. I hope not and for the most part things are back to normal around here but I will admit that the whole process has got me thinking. Not about the afterlife or what colour God's hair is or anything like that. I wonder exactly what those two old bastards did that got them saddled with each other and what kind of bond can walk right through the wall of death and remain unscathed on the other side.

End To End

I got on the bus with one of the two bags I was carrying dragging behind me, fumbled out my pass and finally settled onto the long seat across the back. She sat on the far end of the bench and pretended not to see me. Her face was turned upwards, into the sunlight, with a concentrated look of sophistication that turned my heart inside out. I could see the decision to turn and look at me weave its way across her forehead and she said, “Oh, hello. How are you?” We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, just like people do who don’t know each other, until I caught a concerned look from a woman sitting in a seat across from me. I reached over and pulled her to me and she exploded in a riot of laughter and I hugged her to me as she cried, “Dad, You’re not supposed to know me.”

From end to end the galaxy exists only as a question in my mind. The other big ones, like, ‘Why?’ and ‘What if?’ float around, nebulous and cloud-like as I struggle to hold onto whatever will I have left. I am told that the gift of curiosity can also be a curse and I believe it. Do I want to know the answers? I do, if only to calm her fears and make everything easier for her. It was so very easy then. The questions were small, in a child’s voice, to the point and I knew the answer to every one of them. She knows now that we are learning our lessons together and I ask her as many as she asks me.

The bus ride was long and over the years we took it often. The sense of time passing was lost on me until one day, in the middle of a story I was telling her, a long and rambling one that I had forgotten the point to, she put a finger to my lips and said, “Let’s play the silence game.” She wore a smile that turned my heart inside out again. I had to laugh, too, because I never win that game.

An Ugly Man

I was weaving towards the bar, working my nearly depleted sense of balance into what I hoped looked simply like someone navigating a crowded room, neatly avoiding dumping anyone’s beer and without knocking too many people in the head with my elbows. I had an epiphany then about the good sense carpenters have for rounding the corners of the huge oak slab that separated me from the taps and was about to comment on that when I felt a tug at my elbow and turned to find Shaun standing there, to whom I extended my glass and said, “Hey man, where have you been?”.
“Playing pool.”, he said, “I’m gonna need your help. I’m gonna crush this guy’s skull back there and I need you to back me up.”
“What?”, I said. I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t understand him but I wanted him to know that I was way too drunk to fight.
“He’s got a couple of friends and I don’t want one of them jumping me when I’m not looking.”
“For Christ’s sake, Shaun, you’re not eighteen anymore. Let it alone and I’ll buy you a beer.” There was only one man I could trust to find a fight in a bar that was as unthreatening as this one and he was looking at me like I’d just called his mother a slut.

What I said was, sadly, true. We weren’t eighteen anymore and in fact both of us had twice that behind us. I’m not exactly sure what Gord Downie meant when he sang, “There’s nothing uglier than a man hitting his stride.”, but if I had to hazard a guess it was Shaun. The combination of self doubt and regret at turning forty gives a man a dangerous attitude and I’m speaking from experience. To make it to an age when I don’t have to listen to anyone else and still carry the rage of every disappointment I’ve ever faced means that I don’t feel embarrassment anymore when I speak my mind. Other people feel it for me and I’m pretty sure that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I do have enough common sense, however, not to fuck with a kid half my age when he’s surrounded by his buddies. I’ll teach them a lesson in an arena they’re years from reaching. I’ll make them feel stupid and do it in a way that will live with them until they’re my age and doing it to someone else. That is the lesson here.

“Where the fuck were you, man?” It was Shaun. He stood looking over the wall of my cubicle and couldn’t even try to hide the welt on the side of his head. I laughed for nearly twenty minutes and I’m sure he heard it all the way on the other side of the office, in his cubicle. I liked Shaun a lot. He was good for me in a way that the ugly one is in a group of women. I took him out for lunch that day and poked fun at him until I’d run out of jokes. I may not make a ton of money, or drive a cool car and I certainly don’t brag about my sexual exploits anymore but I do get some enjoyment out of life.

Chain Linked Fence

The door opened inward and for a moment it seemed to have acted on its own and then, slowly, with the careful steps of imperfect balance and a wariness and suspicion she closed it behind her. She stood on the concrete slab and looked at the yard until she had decided in which corner to start. The ground was still frozen and last years leaves, the ones she had missed during the fall raking, were sodden and piled against the chain linked fence that bordered the small yard. It was cold but she wore her overcoat open with a scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. She wore a simple housedress underneath and, below the hem, her knee high stockings were crowded around her ankles, resting on the withers of an old pair of black shoes laced with black laces.

In the days before the temperature began to rise above zero, at the last of winters worries, the snow had disappeared but that had not loosened it’s grip on the earth which seemed impervious to the weakened sun and held firm, solid with frost. The garden looked dead but she knew it only slept. Leaning on her cane, she bent as far as she could and any pieces of paper and any discarded cartons she could reach she piled near to the gate at the street. She moved deliberately and with a patience that came from the certainty that she could tame and reveal her well ordered beds where now only decayed straw stood. Like her, the bushes and shrubs lay exposed to the elements and owed their survival to nothing more than the belief that another season would come, nothing more.

She worked her way around the perimeter in a well worn pattern of contented duty and when she again reached the gate at the street she stood straight and peered up and down the sidewalk. Seeing no one she began to kick the refuse out of her garden and onto the sidewalk after which she closed the gate and, dusting off her hands, she turned and walked to the door. The garden was clean but the rest of the world was another’s responsibility.

The door swung silently closed and nothing moved until a truck came down the street and with it’s passing blew the pile of garbage across the sidewalk and up against the chain linked fence and it settled there.

Saturday Night's All Right

I hope you had a good time. Did you wear a green hat and drink too much? Did you leave work early? If you had it booked off then I guess you're a forward thinker. I love the reasoning. It's fun. It's a chance to blow off a little steam. I'm Irish.

I was in the middle of a bar over-stuffed and under-staffed. People puked on the floor and treated each other with the usual amount of distrust and disdain. They fought and fell onto the sidewalk together and then crawled off home to weather out their Saturday on the couch.

It's only once a year, if you forget the night before and the week before that or every other night that preceded this one. It's a special occasion like any other; I just got fired, I broke up with my girlfriend or I deserve it for making it through another week.

Eventually the hangover will recede and you'll forget the pain and remember only other, newer, pains. Next weekend is coming, though, and you'll have another week's worth of good reasons to do it all again. I like that about you. You really use your brain. I hope you had a good time.

Jet Lagged

He realized that he hadn't been sleeping and so he pushed himself up out of bed. In the glow of the ancient digital clock he could only make out vague shapes and pointed himself in the direction of the bathroom. He chuckled as he imagined what he must look like, taking half steps, arms outstretched so he wouldn't bump into the door frame and he wished he had paced off the distance when they got in last night. He walked into a corner anyway and swore as he rubbed his jammed fingers and she said, "What are you doing up?"
"Go back to sleep.", he said, "I'm going for a walk, I'm too restless."
In the bathroom he pulled on the shorts he'd worn the night before, still damp from the rain, and he wondered where his shoes were.

The heavy door made an audible click and she blinked into the darkness. It was typical that the more he tried to be quiet, the more noise he made. He was gone now, though, and she could finally go back to sleep. It made no sense to her that he couldn't sleep in; the flight had been long and uncomfortable and she didn't care if she slept all day. That's what vacations are for, she thought. She wondered what he was going to do but soon lost contact with the thought as her dreams super-imposed themselves on her and she slept again.

The light was unlike anything he'd seen before, haunted and surreal. He looked up at the trees lightly framed against the sky and slowly drifted to a stop on the gravel path to the water. The taste of salt in the air and the warmth of the breeze was so unlike anything he'd felt before and he wondered why it had taken him so long to make up his mind to come here. He hadn't wanted to at all, suspicious and condescending, he'd joked for weeks about getting sick from the water and spending the whole time locked in the bathroom. Now that he was here he wondered if he could leave.

The ocean was calm and iron gray in the pre-dawn light, but he could sense, just beyond the horizon, the sun ready to burst on him. He felt like he was ten years old, waiting for Christmas morning, waiting for the wonder and the mystery and smiled to himself as he stood, hands in his pockets, ready for the world to bloom. The quiet wash of the waves was more subdued than he had imagined and that made it more frightening to him, somehow, as he contemplated the dangers of the strange animals he knew lived out there. He closed his eyes and let his other senses tell him about the sand, fine and soft, under his feet and the birds, slowly coming to their senses in the trees behind him, and the muted noises filtering down from the main building, of the morning shift already at work making sure that paradise was plastered all over the dining hall.

He wasn't surprised when he felt her hand slip into his or to feel her head leaning against his shoulder blade. As tired as she was, she wasn't immune to his child like excitement and wanted to be there as the sun broke the horizon, yellow-orange and impossibly bright, on the first day; the first time he'd ever seen the ocean.

Feeling Fine

I am angry this morning. So angry I could spit, or scream, or punch a hole in the wall, except that that would hurt and then I'd just have to fix the hole. The problem is simple, too simple for any kind of explanation. I just spent about seven hours dreaming the same little bit of dream over and over again. To make matters worse I can't remember what I was dreaming about.

Three o'clock in the morning found me staring, a little wild eyed, at the ceiling wondering why this was happening. The more I struggled the more my sadistic interior director thrilled in rewinding and playing the same piece again. I don't even know if it is an important piece, something that has surfaced from the depths of my mind to warn me or to scare me into action. Maybe my brain was caught in a loop, Star Trek like and equally inane, worthy of a one hour episode but certainly not seven re-runs in a row. The trekkies out there aren't going to like that bit but right now I could take on every Klingon willing, that's how angry I am.

Mad might be a better way to put it because I feel a little crazy right now. Even the cat is steering clear of me and he's psychotic. I haven't had any sleep and I have go to work now. Maybe humping a twenty five pound bag of mail around the city might clear my head a little bit. Maybe not. Anyway, I'll see you in an hour.

Yukon Gold

The enthusiasm of a young man about to embark on a new career is tangible in his good humour and munificence, however quickly it wanes as the pressure of that first day mounts until, finally, it crushes that fragile spirit.

It was a chip wagon and it was hell on wheels.

I agreed, as a favour to help out and given that I had previous fryer experience it should have been no problem. The first chore of the day was to get up at six to buy the potatoes from the distributor. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of going into a place that peels washes and bags hundreds of pounds of potatoes every day but it was nearly enough for me. I threatened to quit right there. However the promise of a nice day and a six pack brought me back into the fold and we went downtown to get our spot before nine. This involved a lot of swearing and fist shaking as the gangs of chip wagon goons squared off over the best spots and, being the new guys, we ended up in a low traffic area where I was lucky enough to spend the next eight hours listening to people bitch and complain about the long waits, the undercooked fries and the size of the servings.

Ah, the sweet smell of mediocrity. Having made barely enough money to cover the cost of the potatoes on the first day, the second day started out a little more modestly and we bought only half the first days quota. When these failed to go I knew it was over but no matter how easy it was for me to hand in my apron and move on it was twice as hard for the guy who owned it. He still had a brand new chip wagon to pay off and I wasn't sticking around to help him do it.

All summer the poor bastard carted that thing around from corner to corner looking for the sweet spot. I visited every now and again only to discover that sometimes I was the first customer they'd had that day. Some guys have a knack for business and others work their asses off for years without ever really hitting it. I don't know what ever happened to him as I lost touch over the years but I do keep my ear to the ground listening for the news of the next chip magnate and wondering if I could, maybe, get my old job back. I just don't have the patience or the fortitude, I guess, for that 'get in on the ground level' thing. Then again, I haven't spent a day since that summer smelling like a vat of grease and I still like the taste of French fries.

Maybe I'm better off for my intolerance.

Apology Accepted

I met Cecilia at Raspberry House, in Hamilton, the summer I spent working off my community service on the Bruce Trail. She was a surprisingly small woman with spiky black hair, which to my amazement turned red over the course of the summer. I don't know anything about why women colour their hair and it was only one of the surprises she force fed me on those long days wandering up and down the trail, fixing signs and mending retaining walls. I couldn't say how she ended up there and I never did tell her my own reasons; that being a secret between me and the judicial system that put me there, in the line of fire, so to speak.

I was staying at a residence in town, hitch-hiking to work every morning and catching a lift home every night when, one day, Cecilia begged a lift with me and Pete, my supervisor. Pete was a funny guy. He didn't ever really say all that much but he gave you the distinct feeling that he was laughing at you all the time. Cecilia jumped up beside me in the cab of Pete's truck and by the time we got out I was fucked. Even though it was against the house rules I invited her in and after sneaking her past my den mother, Ricky, we stayed up most of the night smoking cigarettes and telling lies to each other about how great we were. I must have fallen asleep at one point and when I woke up she was gone. So were my cigarettes. Pete laughed, in his quiet way, and warned me not to get too worked up about it. Cecilia shrugged off my attempts to talk to her for nearly a week, which drove me nuts, and so I was a little surprised that Friday afternoon when she appeared out of nowhere and told me we were going swimming. I didn't say no.

We hiked through the trees to a little lake, remote by Ontario standards, where she peeled off her clothes and dove in, while I stood there wondering how I was going to get into the water without embarrassing myself. It's funny, to me, that I can take on two guys and a cop in a bar brawl but be scared witless by a tiny little girl, barely old enough to vote. Take heed ladies. It was all fun and games until I got out of the water and saw a gun pointed at my head. I have no idea where she'd been keeping it as I had spent most the hike up there staring at her through her clothes. Nonetheless she was waving a gun at me and going through my jeans and helping herself to the money I had been paid not two hours ago. If this seems farfetched to you let me detail another mystery. I was working off a reduced assault charge and was only getting paid about two bucks an hour for the hard labour. Do the math. I was being robbed by a girl I knew, who I worked with, for about a hundred and fifty bucks. It was surreal. To make matters worse she was taking my clothes with her.

There are any number of things a man will do to win the heart of a pretty girl but I'd had enough and even though she'd told me stay put for at least a half an hour, I decided there was only one thing to do. Catch her and get my money back. I was pretty sure she wouldn't actually shoot me for a hundred and fifty bucks. Still, I gave her a bit of a head start.

The climb up the embankment was not something I would happily repeat naked. The brushes and tree branches scraped and poked me in those places usually protected and, needless to say, I wasn't making great time. As I neared the top of the hill I heard a truck start up and wondered if she had an accomplice. I thought that, maybe, the shock of seeing me, stark naked and exploding from the trees would surprise her and give me an advantage. I can only imagine what I must have looked like to the six or seven people in the back of Pete's truck, all my co-workers, as I tripped and stumbled, going too fast for my battered body to stop, into the middle of the road. They were howling with laughter, Pete the hardest of all, and all I could do was stand there with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath.

In the middle of them, standing on the bed of the truck was Cecilia, waving her pistol at me, with a big grin on her face. Then she let me have it. She pulled the trigger and a stream of water barely dribbled out the end of her gun. She turned it around and, giving the barrel a hurt look, said, "Now that was disappointing." I wasn't exactly sure what she was talking about and so decided not to ask. I had to laugh. What else could I do.

That was twelve years ago and I still wander up and down the Bruce Trail and sometimes I think about her. Maybe it was the way she laughed or the way she commandeered Pete and his truck and the rest of the crew to pull a practical joke on the new guy or maybe it was just the way she apologized. I have never, before or since, gotten an apology quite like that, I can tell you.

When Sleep Falls Heavy On Me

I chased after the piece of paper, which by now had been picked up by the wind and was darting out into the road. I followed and looked up to see cars bearing down on me. The drivers honked and swerved but I couldn't let it get away. I slammed a foot onto a corner of the sheet and waited as a string of commuters bobbled their heads to get a look at who was interrupting their normally automatic procession.

The writing was curious to me, short bursts of appeal in a language I couldn't read, and looked like the messages of hope and goodwill I'd seen on the outside of a box I'd once picked up at a small take out restaurant on Somerset; Chinese.

The creaking floor and swinging chickens announced my arrival more succinctly than the soft chimes and before I could get my bearings the owner had appeared to ask what I wanted. I handed him the piece of paper and he frowned at me and told me he wouldn't do that sort of thing. I asked him who would and he looked offended, but lowering his voice he said, "Two doors down, two knock, two steps up and two right turns." and he disappeared as quickly as he had come.

Outside the mechs were wreaking havoc, citizens ran with all they could carry and the soldiers shot them without haste but with discouraging accuracy. Two doors down, two knocks, two steps up and two right turns later I passed the paper to a young woman who appeared to have no legs. She mumbled at me and then to herself and finally to a kid who had followed me up. In no time at all I was being ushered out the back door and into a cab. I turned to look at the scene of horror receding behind me and could only hope that the message of hope and goodwill I had received that morning was my ticket out of this place. I was safe, for the time being.

Air Pressure

"I asked her what the problem was and she answered, "Air pressure."
I'd heard this theory before. Apparently she is so sensitive to the changes in air pressure that it's convenient to blame all her bad moods on it. It sounded like more bullshit to me so I made myself scarce and went out to the shed. I can smoke away my bad moods but not in the house." With a heavy sigh he sat down in the chair closest to the window and lit a cigarette.

"In 1972 I bought the house and the surrounding fields for $35,000. Now it's worth 3 million and change, not that I would ever sell it. I suppose I'm planning to die here but that wasn't something I'd even begun to think about until last year, about this time, when I had a heart attack, right here in the shed. I'd been working on my boat, a model, not the real thing, when my mind kind of went blank and I couldn't see my fingers anymore. I thought I was just tired but when I tried to stand up my legs gave out and the next thing I knew I was in an ambulance, staring at the blinking lights and the two paramedics who were doing their best to save my sorry ass. I'd always thought it would hurt but I was blissing out and didn't care what happened to me anymore. I suppose that that's the only real long term side effect, not caring, I mean. I don't give a shit what happens to me and its been a wonderful turn around."

I said nothing. He wanted to talk and so I let him.

"After thirty years as a shipping clerk for the government I retired. They gave me a fat pension and now I've got no worries, except for my darling wife who's driving me nuts. I love the woman completely. I always have. It's just that since my heart attack I don't care what she has to say anymore; the problem is that she has plenty to say. I swear she can talk for hours about a colour or a smell. She could stunt the growth of children with words. I always wondered why she could never keep a plant alive until I realized that she was boring them to death. They'd stop sucking nutrients from the soil rather than sit and listen to her rambling, mostly incoherent ideas about the weather, the state of the world or the reason hydrogen peroxide is a better antiseptic than alcohol. She gets her ideas from the magazines and periodicals she subscribes to by the dozens. I sometimes think she's trying to finish the job the heart attack couldn't."

He had an easy way of talking that reminded me of my own father, someone who has grown confident rather than having been born that way. He set the bag on the table and waited for me to say something. I took the bag and set it on the floor beside me without looking inside.

"I need some quiet time. Do you understand that? I need some time to be alone with my thoughts. That's it. So, when can you start?" He leaned forward, his hands on his knees and waited, for an answer, for a word, for a sign that each second that ticked by was adding to and not subtracting from the years he had accumulated, just like dollars in the bank, wondering how he could spend them all and just live, without leaving anything behind to indicate that he'd been here at all.