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| from The Fatality (p.10) |
| from Fight (p.63) |
| from Fishboat (p.92) |
| from Toba Inlet (p.96) |
| from Gas Tank (p.109) |
| from Workers (p.147) |
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The Fatality
This was before the ambulance service was extended to most rural areas and that was the last accident we went to that year. With autumn and cooler weather the traffic dropped off and the resort business slowed to a trickle. Winter rains washed the motorcycle skid-marks until they were just a memory. News wasn't something we sought after with any great vigour in those days and we didn't hear about how Halvorsen was doing until about Christmas, when the replacement mail carrier stopped in at the cafè one afternoon.
 "Say, you know that fella you guys picked up down the road last fall?" Just my Dad was at the counter to listen, but I heard the man from where I was in the back.
"Yeah. How'd he do, anyway?"
"The fellas in the yard were sayin' the other day that he'd been in town and talked to one of 'em. He got over the head injury, you know."
"Uh huh." Dad's usual tone hadn't changed though I could sense his interest. he took a long drag on his cigarette. The smoke curled around his head and fouled a ray of sunlight passing through the window, casting a dirty sort of light on the counter.
"Had family trouble after he got out of hospital. Heard his wife ran off. Couldn't stand life with a changed man is the way I heard it."
"Wouldn't doubt."
"She took the kids, house and everything. He's workin' light duty at the dockyards now." The man downed his coffee and got up to leave. "I heard he's gone kinda funny. Weird in the head."
"Wouldn't doubt," said Dad. |
Fishboat
Half of me wanted to exit right then. Leave with dispatch and let the kid out of my mind. I turned to him. "So who's fooling around."
"Aw, come on..." The kid set hands on hips. He looked away, then back again. "You say you want to fish. But you don't have anything to back it up. People get killed fooling around like that."
"I'm sure you're right. But what makes you such an expert."
Don moved closer and spoke quick and hard, as if his words would not come out any other way. "Look, I might not look it but I been hanging around these docks and these boats for more than half my life. My third foster home was to this fisherman and he took me out when I wasn't even eight years old. At first I hated it, cried all day and he beat me because I wasn't doing any work and he did other things to me too. It was just me and him on that boat and he kept on taking me out for years and years. I tried to run away a whole bunch of times but he always found me and then it would be right back on the boat and out again the next morning.
"For years and years I didn't go to school or anything just learned how to use a boat and clean fish and wipe up puke from being seasick or drinking too much rot-gut wine. When I was fourteen I knew everything I had to know about running a boat but I still hated it because I was always being forced, y'know? You ever had that feeling?"
"Yeah maybe. I think..."
"Anyway, the year I was fourteen the old man was drinking and beating on me worse than any other year. It was f****n' awful and one night I just got fed up and slammed the guy over the head with a two-by-four and he went down hard and hit the deck with his head. I was never so glad in my f****n' life. I carted him to the side and through him over. It was night so he went out of sight right away but a few minutes after, I heard him come out of it and start shouting and hollering. I didn't care." |
Gas Tank
"Is it going to blow up?"
"Dunno..."
"It always does on TV."
We soon had our answer. Moving back still further, the heat now too much for our faces even twenty meters away. There was another whoosh, bigger than the last. This time a red and white firestorm seared forward under the van, sending a shot of liquid fire five meters ahead. It looked like someone down the line of van-owners had bought the flame-thrower option, meant to barbecue anything in front of you in a traffic jam. The fiery tongue left the whole vehicle alight. The spare tire, mounted on the front, began to sizzle and flame.
"Oh God, oh god, oh god..."
She was beginning to break down. Standing there shimmering, the steady fire-glow accenting the more fetching aspects of her night-attire, she eyed me with a mad glare. I took her in my arms, her face pressed tight into my shoulder. We stod, she sobbing, me watching the van burn itself to death. It was one of the more incredible sights I've ever seen.
"Hey, you should watch this..." I realized I was taken with it and felt proud of having let things go and seen the little bit of fascination in all the s***ty circumstances of it. "I mean, there's nothing we can do about it so we might as well enjoy ourselves."
Her face stayed buried, she said nothing.
"Haven't you ever wanted to set fire to a car before?"
She withdrew from hiding and wiping her face on my jacket. Then looked. The fire burned so bright that the woods around us were lit as if for a movie shoot. The moon paled and went invisible behind a massive plume of black smoke. Oily clouds gushed from the open doors and poured urgently from the rear. The smoke was so thick its condensed weight forced it to the ground before rising dispelled into the sky.
A giggle rose from my stomach, I could not hold it back. Shocked at myself, I tried stifling the hilarity developing inside me. It was impossible, like trying to keep ten thousand stand-up comedians from getting out.
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Fight
Calm, he did not fight but let his heart even its beating, his lungs enlarge deliberately, ignoring the pain and shock. His brain vibrated annoyed against its casing. He tried to minimize as best he could the mistake and its long-term implications. He ended by relaxing in this temporary recess and gazing upward to the smoke-smudged grey sky and immediately considered the absurd image of a bird fluttering amidst the concert of hurtling lead.
In fact, a pigeon. Struggling too much, Richard saw, even with the turbulence of the air and the distractions of noise and smoke. He noticed then the awkward dangling paper, a leaf from an officer's dispatch book, probably, waving and shifting weight, complicating flight procedure for the wrestling bird in an impossible feat of comunication across the battlefield.
"Hah!" Richard had not intened to speak or make a sound. He had at this point not spoken for some twelve days having avoided as was his expertise other humans for almost as long. But there it was, a sound acknowledging the desperate survivor straining overhead. He watched the bird circle, then make halting up-and-down progress toward the rear. The bullet wizz and zing was heavy, more than usual, and Richard's scarred consciousness miss-stepped then into emotional terrain where as yet he had not deigned to go. The bird jolted and dipped, hit slightly, lost feathers and spiralled toward the mud. At the final instance the brave thing recovered, labouring back to height and flying true as this crazy predicament would allow.
Richard hoped the water on his face was from a mud puddle, but then the heat of it, its magic origins within his face, pushed him beyond toughness and the denial of hope and he cried and cried as if born and raised to it, draining his tears to the cold October French soil, adding his feeling to all the other odd nutrients this ground would cull for its sustenance on into history.
The message pigeon flew struggling away, valiant. Richard rolled to his side, wiping and composing back to the machine-rolling killer he had chosen to become and proceeded on, forever then aware. |
Toba Inlet
Next morning I noticed the bones had been pretty well scattered. There were guys still playing with the skull. The cook was stirring a big pot of oatmeal with a tibia and getting a h**l of a laugh any time somebody realized just what he was doing. Over at the end of the camp there was a waterfall and some jacka***s were taking a shower, just standing there in the cold air in their underwear but one guy had the ribcage and most of the spine down to the pelvis and he was pretending to dance with it under this waterfall. Everybody just about got sick every time this twit leaned over and pretended to kiss his partner and then back it up against a rock and pretend to hump it.
Over by the mess some officer was drilling a hole in the breastplate, making a pendant. The whole place had gone skeleton crazy. I didn't give a damn about the bloody thing and I was plenty pissed off when the CO said we'd be stopping over for the day and sailing the next day. I didn't bother with the bones myself but maybe you noticed in my room, the lump of something that props up my dictionaries? Well, I'll tell you how I got that.
Later in the day we were all standing around the campfire trying to get warm. It was snowing or sleeting or something and the clouds had moved in low and boxed us in with mountains on either side. It was getting late into the afternoon and some guys had started having an argument and it started to get quite serious and look like a fight. They went on and on and all of a sudden one of 'em gets up and yells you sonofab***h and grabs a femur, a big leg bone, that had just been sitting around by the fire and clobbers this guy. Then somebody else yelled and wrestled the bone away and clobbers him right back. Meanwhile the first guy to get clubbed struggles up from the ground with his head bleeding away like crazy and dives at the other guy and pretty soon we have a free-for-all going. |
Workers
Acid-Karen tosses wifely derision. You haven't sobered up from today.
Aw, get off about today. My head feels like a piece-a-s**t.
Innocence Sally a charm amid ambient dirtknowledge. Her flutevoice among tubas.
You mean you were drinking already today? Didn't you go to work?
He went to work alright and he took his little friend with him.
Lay off!
You're making a fool of yourself.
Should I leave? Uneasy Sally shift-talks. You guys want to be alone...?
Stay, Sally. This goon isn't going to be trouble. Not if he wants to live in his own house.
You sure, Karen? Maybe Johnny wants to talk this out.
Him? Talk? Ha!
Yeah, stay Sal. Jerry's gonna be here any time now. With news.
News? Query Karen lightens.
Welcome subjectshift enhances Sally. Jerry's talking to Mr. Ainsley about a new job. Why do you think they're being so long, Johnny?
Maybe Ainsley wants to show ol Jer around the office. Maybe he gave him the job on the spot...
Hmmm. That's not the way it sounded over the phone. Jerry doesn't think he'll get anywhere at the plant.
Naw, he's a natural. A shoo-in. He can't miss, ol Jer can't.
Karen softgazes husband approaching caring bemusal. Lips curl. Smirk. Eye spark. |
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