As day ends and night begins our mild mannered office boy sheds his paper clips and pens to don his suit and hit the streets as.......Soul Cracker!
Just a shameless plug for the band. If you come I promise I'll make up a story about you and post it here tommorrow. Rainbow. 9:30.
We drove, bloodied but seamless, towards the sleeping giant. Everyone, I knew, was besieged in their dreams by the treachery of another. I held on to the steering wheel and stared straight into the night, telling myself that nothing could tear us apart but the giant laughed and as we met the bay and unpacked the boat I felt it and the ground shook with mirth.
I don't remember anything more until we made landfall. I fell back when the sky opened and it rained the heads of a thousand warriors down on us, crying out and mocking us and we kicked them into the dense brushes as we ran along the path. I began to count the faces carved into the trees and numbered every man, woman and child who had ever walked the earth until their numbers started to roll backwards and I was left alone. Then the water rose and I heard their voices take up a song and just as suddenly they were cut off, gurgling and choking into the blackness of Superior's depths. I panicked when the water came up over the top of my boots and I scrambled up to where I couldn't see their eyes burning into mine from beyond the cold and darkness. I stepped on something then, that pulled away from me and I lost my balance, falling backwards towards the shore. I remember I shut my eyes to hide from whoever piloted the boat back across the bay.
When I opened my eyes I was once again in the truck and driving. It was going backwards up the steep path from the water and my eyes came to rest on the form of the giant. It was lying quiet now but for years I've dreamt, nightmarishly, about the night I lost you all in his forest, miles from home and counting the revolutions per minute that a man's soul can make while he breathes his last breath.
Its funny how after so many years I feel the need to apologize but that day I wacked you with the oar stands out in my mind as one of those unfortunate things that I can't apologize enough for.
As kids we try, try and try again to earn the respect of our elders. Doing something right for my own father became as monumental as climbing a mountain without boots, a coat or a Sherpa. Somewhere along the way I just gave it up as an idea whose time would never come.
I like to think that asking me to row that day was your way of restoring my faith in adults. I have to say that you were pretty cool about getting beaned in the head. My first instinct was to see if I could swim fast enough to prevent the clout I was sure was coming, but you just said, "It was an accident. Don't worry about it.", as you clutched your cracked skull, tears streaming from your eyes, and insisted that we keep going.
When the anger comes and I feel like lashing out, I try to remember that day. I try to imagine the mantra that must have been running through your mind at that moment. I imagine it was, 'Try not to kill him. Try not to kill him." Whatever it was, it worked and we finished the boat ride in one piece, although I imagine it took a couple of beers to really put it behind you. You told me to forget about it but I never really have and for that I wanted to say 'thank-you'.
Thanks, Larry.
I came across a story about piranhas a short while ago that, for some reason, caught my attention. I guess its easy to assume I have a rather macabre sense of destiny but the interesting part of the story was not the 38 people who were skeletonized when their bus crashed into the Urubu River, a tributary of the Amazon, but by the definition of the Urubu as a 'black water' river.
Immediately I began to wonder if the little fish, packed with rows of scalpel sharp teeth were the reason the river was described as black. Maybe it was because the people who lived around the area knew that darkness was the only outcome for sweaty travelers taking a quick midnight swim or perhaps they were talking about the hearts of those mighty carnivores who can strip a man's body of flesh in minutes, a reference to their bloodlust and animosity directed towards lumbering land dwellers.
The first definition of 'black water' that I found was in reference to an area off the coast of Florida, where after the ocean's water turned black, the locals complained to the government and everyone shrugged their shoulders until a scientist with a penchant for poop decided that human waste was likely an element in the darkening of the Atlantic. That seemed to fit with other definitions which explained that 'black water' is what can infect otherwise friendly places with parasites and other vermin, another testament to our ingenuity and advanced technology.
I was still unsatisfied, simply because that definition didn't fit with the ad I soon found describing a breathtaking and untouched wilderness that could be found on their 'black water cruise'. The first definition left a lot to be desired as far as a get away from the stench and decrepitude found in the big city.
It took another couple of hits before I found a site that described 'black water' as a river that is unusually pure, devoid of minerals, parasites and other bacteria. The colour of the water comes about after a hard rain when the sediment from the surrounding forests runs into the river, clouding it for hours until everything settles down. To add to the confusion the sight claimed that 'black water rivers' were some of the most pristine in the world, with a clarity that allows for maximum visibility, except, of course, for when its raining.
So, to sum up, a 'black water river, is either one that is polluted with human waste or the most pristine the world has to offer. Makes me want to do a bit more investigating before I head out on vacation. All I have to worry about now is the piranhas.
Here I am on the short side of caring. The general consensus is that I should if I really want to get anywhere. This is the problem. Given the multiple choices I can't decide if there is really any better than here and I've learned that maybe has a built in excuse for not wanting to stick my neck out.
I used to date a girl who just couldn't tell the truth. She was an artist, suicidal and more than a little dramatic. She constantly complained that no one understood her despite the fact that everything she said was pure and unequivocal bullshit. We dated for a little while and I began to understand that she was, perhaps, the most self-destructive person I had ever met. However, she was cute. What could I do? In the end she started sleeping with my best friend and justified it by saying that we had never really dated in the first place. I asked her to give me back the keys to my apartment and waved goodbye from the balcony while dialing up her replacement.
The truth, I told myself, was that hedging your bets nets a small income. I believe this in theory but since when has a theory ever performed well outside the lab? In the end she married some guy and had a couple of kids and from all reports lives across the tracks from crazy. She accomplished what I couldn't and that was to relinquish the death grip on her teenaged fantasies about what is really important in life. As time goes by, it seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, the envelope we've gotten stuffed into seems roomy by college standards and the smell of dirty socks fades as our sense are dulled. Principles? Integrity? Proof? Who needs them when the alternative is angst, frustration and weekly visits to the pharmacological equivalent of an endless May two-four party and you're the host with the most? I still wonder what she might have become if she'd just gone completely crazy. By the way, I'm not talking about you, you.
He was up before the sun and gone despite the promise he'd made to help her with the sale of this year's crop. She asked for coffee and sank into a reverie darkened by the knowledge that she was undone, again. She knew she was irresolute on the floor and when pushed, often let the ranchers intimidate her into a lower price; she was afraid of their rude manners and excluded from their society by the way they talked in their heavily accented dialect, without pausing to translate for her. Her husband always returned from the melee with the price he wanted but she had been losing ground for two years now. She was certain that he could help her stand her ground, that he could withstand the leers and the gestulations that made them laugh and roll their eyes.
He was, however, no longer hers to control. At seventeen, he resented their mutual reliance and now he snuck out before the house was in order, before the maids were up and before Learhty, the foreman, the only man left alive that he feared could catch him and put him to work on the tractor or in the office.
She knew, at least, that he wasn't going to see that pouting little bitch, the one who had kept him for three nights in a state of drunkenness, trapped like a pet rabbit and maneuvered into a dangerous submission to her sexuality. She knew because she had forbidden it with the only hold she had on him anymore, which was money. Without it he was just another put-out looking for a way out of this town and into the city where his wits were dull and his cunning undeveloped when compared to the hawking thieves he would surely fall in with. She had pulled the girl aside and told her, in no uncertain terms, that the money was in her hands and would never pay for anything resulting from that union. He was home the next day and sulked for weeks before he found out what she'd done.
He might have gone to the docks to sit idle while the men worked and, later, he would end up leaning back on his haunches dicing with the ranch hands who would take his boots or his clothes when he didn't have money. He couldn't see the disdain in their eyes directed at him, grown out of generations of division and nurtured by their memory of his father, cruel and withholding, overshadowing his feeble attempts at a camaraderie that could never be real.
She stared into her coffee, sitting uncharacteristically at the long table in the morning kitchen. The servants worked nervously around her, unused to her presence and unsure what mood she was in. She mused, silently, that even in her own house, they treated her as an outsider infringing on their property simply because she had married well and won their servitude in an unfair match played with rules they couldn't understand. She turned over her hands and her eyes followed the creases filled in with years of indulgence that had forgotten their hollow and uncertain beginning.
Then she straightened her back and was about to call for more coffee when the street door opened and he came in; the pallor of the room lightening as if the sun had waited to enter behind him.
"Are you ready?", he asked and she relented, a little, knowing that once was a gift but that he would have to do more, provide more and demonstrate his loyalty more before she could loosen the bonds that held him to her, until he proved to her that he could be the man her husband had been.
And I thought about him again; that time I traveled west with him. I remember the feral look of obscenity on his face and the leer in his voice. I tried to make him listen to Keith Jarrett playing Gershwin and he laughed and pulled the tape out and tossed it on the floor of the van. I hated him then, because his features were swollen and his voice was different. He told me I was a pussy and made me sit up all night listening to Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings but I escaped into a fantasy about a beautiful girl, whose belly bulged when she sat down and about the small of her back, where tiny hairs swirled away down out of sight and the unmistakable look in her eyes when she said she liked to swim naked after dark, and it was after dark. He hit me then, because he knew that look and wasn't going to let me get away with it. You little shit. Don't think you're better than me because this blood runs true, and he was right. And later, when the sun had been up for days and all the wood he needed was inside, he told me what it was like to grow up alone and afraid and I hated him more because it had turned him into a coward. But the sky was beautiful and it changed me and I never forgot the mountains that jumped up out of nowhere and the lakes that smelled like water, not like fish, and the cold gray asphalt that snaked away, always leading to somewhere I would never visit. I met her again, years later, and I told her I had always dreamed of this, lying with her, her skin dimpled in the night air and my hand on her hip, but now it was Baker playing My Funny Valentine and something broke in me and she got up and left, looking at me sadly, like I wasn't there. And it was true. I wasn't there.
I first met April in June. I was sitting, somewhat uncomfortably, in the back of a paddy wagon, when the door was flung open and a harried police man lifted her up onto the platform. Myself and the others cheered her arrival to make her feel comfortable, more than anything, and she sat beside me on the bench. The talking started up again after the door closed, most wondering if we were in any kind of serious trouble.
I wasn't worried. Having been arrested at last year's rally, I knew they would let us go in a couple of hours, but I didn't tell them about the ridicule we would have to face before that. Most of them were first-timers and I didn't want the experience to dampen their enthusiasm or for them to lose their feelings of camaraderie.
I told them about the fountain prank last year. How at the end of the bike ride we had gathered at the fountain in Cartier Park for a communal swim when about a dozen of us were carted off to the Elgin street station. In the end we were only fined and that night we gathered at Mark's house for a celebratory beer and bar-b-q.
"So, don't worry about it. No one will have a record or anything, although we might get a bit cold before the day is out."
My story didn't seem to alleviate any of April's fears and so I leaned in to tell her that they'd give us a blanket when we got to the station. That cheered her up a bit and she smiled at me. That was the moment I lost my mind and I have been happily crazy ever since.
I believe in it, the bike ride, that is. I do it every year. Although I'll remember that one for ever simply because of her. They did give us a blanket and they did fine us and, in the end, April and I shared a cab downtown. Of course, I didn't have anything to write on, but she promised to meet me the next morning at the Second Cup on Elgin, and she did. She was no less beautiful with her clothes on and no worse the wear for the mostly humane, although somewhat lascivious, treatment from the law.
We joke that, if we ever have kids, we can tell them that about our criminal past and how we met while biking around town in the nude, protesting oil dependency, and they'll think they have the craziest parents in the world. But like I said before, I am crazy, and now, so is she.
The afternoon had heated up well beyond what the weather man had said it would. I don't know why I pay so much attention to it except maybe to complain to anyone who'll listen. The call came in around two in the afternoon and I was heading up highway 32 to meet it. It was flat tire and we have two options with those; change the tire or tow the car. It had been a busy morning so I figured a quick tire change would be better for me.
I like driving in the desert. The feeling of reaching into the horizon, stretched tight across the windshield as the truck kicks up a wall of dust makes retreat impossible. The world is one way only and I've got the accelerator almost to the floor. Ahead, the view is as clear as it gets and behind me the mistakes I've made are out of sight. I like that feeling.
I could see it, the Mercedes, lying cock-eyed on the shoulder and wondered why the engine was still running. As I pulled up I realized it was because the driver had barricaded himself in with the air conditioning on. He waited until I had positioned the truck in front of him and waited more until I walked down the driver's side and, finally, he stuck his head out as the window came down.
The dry vacuum of the desert sucked the cool air out of the car in a rush but still he didn't get out. I asked him if he had a spare and he told me he had no idea, that he had to be in Braeside at four and could I make it quick.
The rest of my afternoon was what I call fun. I fussed and farted back and forth while he sat in his car until finally I told him he'd have to get out and ride in the cab with me. As three o'clock crept up I put the truck in gear and began the slow crawl towards Braeside. He sat beside me, saying nothing, while I called on the years I had spent in Lister to fabricate a fantastic tale of lechery and abuse and generally scare the crap out of him. He fidgeted with his briefcase clasps and looked at his cell phone, wishing for a signal, while I dug deep to recall every sordid story I had picked up at the end of the bar in the Grace Hotel.
I don't consider myself a cruel man, just one with a ribald sense of humour. I get a kick out of seeing people uncomfortable in their own skin, and all the while I wonder how they'll every survive. This guy obviously had no contingency plan for life. He was lost the moment he drifted across the road and landed on the shoulder. Lost but not beyond hope.
When we pulled into Braeside, around four fifteen, he was frantic and called a cab the second he got a signal. It only took Dave ten minutes to change the tire and I suppose I could have done the same back there in the desert, but what the hell, a man needs to be late every now and again. It also reminds us that perspective doesn't come cheap.
The woman stood in the lobby surrounded by her staff and a client and turned to look at me. I was playing delivery boy and clearly she didn't like the fact that I was there. However, I was a messenger and I was to be shot. She spat venom at me and I ducked but it caught me on the cheek and scoured my skin, burning away any good will, or humour, I had. As I drove away I thought to myself that holding it in could be destructive so, to the amusement of the couple in the car to my right, I let loose a stream of consciousness dressed in profanity and didn't stop until I needed to take a breath or pass out from the effort. It made me feel better. After reflecting on it for a few more moments I screamed out another two choice ones that I always save for the most loathsome examples of humanity. I was over reaching but my good humour was restored and now I was just having some fun.
French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote that "The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unrestrained rejoicing." By this I can confirm that my antagonist is among the least wise, evidenced by her lack of compassion and disdain reserved for those unkowns upon whom she feels compelled to drain her frustrations. In short, some people are just miserable. So be it. Still, I hope she suffers from piles.
My next stop unwound all my hostility. When I told her who I was and why I was there, I could see disbelief in her eyes, but when I gave the package to her she smiled and asked me if she could have one. I said, "You can have them all." , and her smile widened to include every thing in the universe. Funny, isn't it, that not two kilometers separates the wild extremes of human conditioning. Maybe it's not so odd, however, as within me those two polar opposites of reactions sit nestled side by side waiting for the toss of a coin to see who wins and who's about to lose. What a nice lady.
