Max's Folly

by Bill Turpin

  “Good lord. Mystical heft. Paul Simon. You are cynical,” the Guru says.

  “No. I’m practical,” Max says. “Will learning to meditate hurt anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Will it help some people?”

  “Yes, and the people around them,” the Guru says. “That’s the whole point.”

  “Is exploring the cosmic implications essential to helping people?”

  “No. It’s just something they can pursue.”

  “So,” Max says. “I’m telling you how to effectively communicate something that you believe will reduce suffering. I’m not asking you to exploit anyone.”

  For a long time, the Guru confers wordlessly with his brandy. Then he orders another round and turns to Max.

  “Jeez . . . Paul Simon . . . really?”

  “Sure. Of course, we’ll have to work on the wording.”

  1975

  Reporter Gets High

  on Poorly Aimed Gunfire

  A SILENT FORMATION of students barely out of secondary school march up a hill directly toward — again — a Mercedes water cannon. Max hears the aggressive ricochet sound of the Photog’s motor drive before he spots him walking alongside the demonstrators, sidestepping to keep an eye on his viewfinder. He is dressed head to foot in Army greens, no doubt in the hope that cops and soldiers hesitate before shooting at him.

  The mountain sun paints everything in high contrast. The cobblestones are bright but distinct, as if outlined in pen and ink. Most of the kids wear cheap tan pants or drab tunics, the unofficial uniform of community college students. A few wear toque-like alpaca hats with strings hanging from the earflaps. Some of the girls have shirts or sweaters with beads that sparkle in the sunlight. Almost all the faces have high, strong cheekbones and smooth skin the colour of pennies. Max thinks they could pass for native people in some parts of North America. They march in silence with a lithe and steady gait. There are no chants to hide their fear, which is easy to see in their dark wide eyes and tight mouths. But their shoulders are back and their heads straight, like they’re posing for school graduation photos.

  They wear white bandanas over their mouths to symbolize state suppression of free speech. Max thinks of the plaza and wonders if they know how brave they are.

  He looks uphill, dreading what is about to happen. The black cannon waits patiently, water dripping from its tanks. The Army is absent. Max thinks they’ve either abandoned shows of co-operation or they’re busy in the capital mounting the long-awaited counter-coup.

  Max is no tactician, but the positions of the opposing forces make him fearful for the students. The cops can see all the streets and buildings behind the kids, but the marchers can barely see past the cannon and cops in riot gear next to it. A cathedral forms the backdrop. Max looks down-slope and is unsurprised to see an armoured personnel carrier slide in to block the way the kids have come. One block farther downhill, the street is conspicuously open.

  He cannot understand why the students would put themselves in that position. Perhaps they thought the clergy would emerge from the cathedral to protect them. Max looks up the hill. No clergy in sight.

  Max hears the Photog yelling: “Here it comes, man! Here it comes.”

  The water cannon driver revs the diesel engine, creating a plume of black exhaust.

  The Photog takes one look uphill, shoots without look­ing through the viewfinder, and joins Max on the sidelines. He hands over two rolls of exposed film, as is now their custom.

  “What do you think?”

  Max looks him fully in the face and for the first time realizes that the Photog might share part of his bloodline with the kids behind him.

  “We’re in deep shit,” Max says. “We’re in the middle of it again.”

  The Photog looks around and then at Max.

  “Jesus, amigo. How does this happen? You’re a dangerous guy to be around.”

  “Some would call it a knack for being in the right place at the right time,” Max says, not believing it.

  Without ceremony, the water cannon lets loose. Again, the kids go down like dominoes. From the rear, the cops launch tear gas grenades. The foreign correspondents take off downhill. Max doesn’t bother taking notes, but the Photog stops every 10 yards or so and fires the motor drive. Max shouts at him as he starts to follow the crowd toward the open side street on the left.

  “That’s a trap! Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I fucking remember! It was your job to make sure this didn’t happen again.”

  Max looks around. “Oh, Christ.”

  They follow the kids into the side street. Half a block down they encounter a cordon of black-clad cops with rifles and Uzis blocking the way, forcing them into a street on the right. A hundred yards away, an Army troop truck waits for them, blocking the way. This, Max thinks, must be Army’s show of co-operation. Out of choices, the kids charge toward the truck. Max has seen something like this before, at a slaughterhouse.

  The foreign correspondents scoot into a doorway. The Photog takes a light-reading. “This is going to be bad,” he yells.

  But the truck shifts into gear and every one of the dozen or so soldiers in the back turn to face the cops and extend their middle fingers. They hold that pose as the truck drives into an alley and out of the way. The kids charge past. It occurs to Max that few of them even noticed what happened. He and the Photog rejoin them.

  And then Max gets a taste of “real action”. The cops open fire. For the foreign correspondents, all desire to report on the event is supplanted by the urge to go on living.

  In that same moment, protesters and foreign correspondents turn as one, shift into overdrive and accelerate like race cars. The sounds of the shots do not recede but instead surround them. Max’s is certain there is a bullet coming his way. Muscles in his back tense up involuntarily to prepare for the blow. Surely to God this can’t be the end, he thinks.

  A final surge of adrenalin transforms everything. The hardpan underfoot turns into a plush carpet. Running becomes effortless. He can see the rest of the crowd in front of him and feel the Photog just behind him. He can see every pothole and stone miles before he reaches them. Even better, he can see who is going to change direction before it happens and can slip past them effortlessly, like Kareem setting up for the skyhook.

  Despite the weight of his armoured camera bag, the Photog manages to keep up as they come upon an open field scarred by a series of ditches. Max clears them easily, hanging in the air for as long as it takes — forever if necessary — to find the right landing spot. One, two, three, four ditches. Max feels no impact when his foot hits the dirt, just a sense of his muscle absorbing the force and straining against the ground for more speed. Now he veers left, away from the demonstrators, and leads the Photog on a long arc through baked farmland and septic fields. He is ecstatic each time his feet dig into the dirt and his strong legs start the cycle again. Ahead, he can see his route to safety, etched in the hardpan.

  I’m a fucking gazelle, Max exults. I’m an eagle.

  The shooting ends long before Max and his friend stop at the edge of a stream. They lean over, hands on knees, sucking air for several minutes.

  “You okay?” the Photog finally gasps.

  “Yeah. You?”

  The Photog extends his hand and offers the plantation-owner smile: “Yes. And may I say, sir, what an excellent job you did of running away.”

  “And may I add, your own demonstration of flight was exemplary, encumbered as you were by photographic equipment. It was an honour trying to stay ahead you.”

  They took a few more breaths. “I suppose this makes us chicken,” Max says.

  “Perhaps. But chickens who are . . . how you say in English . . . alive.”

  “And there’s no need to mention our cowardice,” Max says. “The Bureau Chief himself said readers wa
nt to know about the incident — assuming it’s over — not what we did to cover it.”

  “Precisely!” the Photog says emphatically. “They do not want to know how scared we were.”

  Max’s thoughts goes to his fleeting experience as a gazelle with the eyes of an eagle. The Photog notices.

  “You were scared, weren’t you?” he asks.

  “Yeah, but mostly I’ve never been so high in my life,” Max replies.

  The Photog gives him a thoughtful look: “We are more different than I thought.”

  Max notices they can see the back of the cathedral, which means they can circle some more and arrive at El Palacio de las Montanas.

  Max stares at the cathedral, noting that no one had emerged from what would certainly be a richly-appointed interior to plead for the safety of their flock.

  1954

  The Yellow Pencil of Doubt,

  First of Two Parts

  IT IS THE day after Max’s sixth birthday and he’s attending Sunday school in the basement of the local United Church. A lot of kids are sitting on cheap wood and metal chairs, waiting for the thing to end.

  But for Max, this is a special moment. At the end of every class, the teachers give new yellow pencils marked “HB” in gold paint to every student who had a birthday during the past week. These are, without question, pencils from God.

  “We celebrate three birthdays today,” says the kind-looking woman who runs the class. “Please come up and receive your pencil as I read your name.”

  Max is already standing when the third name is read out. It is not his. He is still standing when the kids are set free to find their parents upstairs.

  He is flushed with embarrassment and, most importantly, alarm. These pencils are awarded by God, who knows absolutely everything that everyone is doing at all times. He knows more than either Santa or the Queen. God would not forget to give Max his pencil. God never forgets. Moreover, good behaviour is not a requirement for receiving a pencil, because God is all-forgiving. Max’s mind stays with this point: you don’t have to be good like Santa insists (although he always relents). Every week Max sees bad kids get their pencils. But on his birthday week, Max is denied.

  There are only two possible explanations: God hates Max and will send him to Hell when he dies, just like Max’s Catholic friend said.

  Or . . . THERE IS NO GOD.

  It’s a crossroads: One truth leads to Hell; the other to salvation.

  Max frantically reviews the problem one more time and then internalizes the pro-Max conclusion: there is no God, so Max will not go to Hell.

  That still leaves a big question: why are so many important people lying to him about this?

  1973

  If You Go into the Woods Today

  IT’S THE KIND of autumn squall Max hates most. Rainwater is thick on the asphalt, reflecting every glint of light. Headlights, tail-lights, streetlights, even the moon — now slipping out from behind the storm clouds — dance on the black slick in front of his car. The film of tobacco smoke on the windshield does nothing to improve visibility.

  It’s Saturday night and he’s headed back to the newsroom of the shitty little Sunday Tabloid he works for. He’s almost done after four hours of chiens écrasés, a.k.a. squashed dog patrol. This means prowling the streets of Montreal with a police scanner screeching beside him, looking for stories, any stories. He has two briefs to bang out and then it’s off to the Cat Shack for some beer with the Veteran Reporter and the Copy Editor.

  The scanner stops on an exchange about a possible body in some woods. The dispatcher is sceptical. There are a few seconds of useless chatter while the scanner does its thing. Then Max hears a cop ask the dispatcher to repeat the location and — fuck! — it’s two blocks away, an empty, double-block lot across from a Canadian Tire strip mall. He doesn’t even have to make a turn. In 30 seconds he’s pulled up beside the lot.

  Max considers waiting for the cops to arrive because they hate it when reporters beat them to a scene. But he’d been to this very spot for the very same reason a week ago and it turned out to be kids screwing around. Someone at a drinking party in the woods passed out so, for a joke, his friends phoned him in “dead” and disappeared. So it’s a prank, therefore no harm in checking it out before calling it a night. Max grabs his flashlight, bails out of his warm car and starts down the sidewalk, looking for a gap in this odd square of urban bush.

  He finds one quickly, a narrow track matted with wet leaves that branches off into thin tributaries. On instinct Max swings right onto a wider path that seems to head toward a darker part of the woods. The undergrowth is thick but bare, black as charcoal in the moonlight and dripping with cold rain. Max shudders in response to the chill. Branches have soaked his pants with rainwater.

  The storm eases a little. He kills his flashlight and stops for a moment, listening for voices or footfalls, but all he can hear is water dripping and traffic hissing by. A little farther ahead he thinks he can see a clearing, likely to be party central. He expects to find the usual crude lean-to or maybe a battered tent but the space is empty. There’s a circle of rocks for a fire, but it’s obvious nothing has burned there tonight. Max flicks the flashlight on and scans the clearing. He finds a hole in a particularly tangled patch of undergrowth.

  That will be the entrance to the make-out space, he thinks and, bending, makes his way through the tunnel. He looks around. Underfoot he finds used condoms and flattened beer cans. Above, the bushes form a canopy, a perfect spot for teenaged copulation.

  Max feels the adrenaline before he can process what he is seeing. The scene resembles a diorama from a wax museum. A man in a lumberjack shirt and jeans is lying on the ground, facing straight up. Max swings the light over and sees the man is in his late twenties with black hair in tight curls. His head is large, with weirdly exaggerated features and a day’s growth of dark beard. His brown boots are extra large, too. Rainwater from a branch is splatting onto his left eyeball. A deer rifle lies by the corpse’s right hand, the trigger guard pinching his thumb. There’s an inch-wide crater rimmed with fabric and flesh near the centre of his chest. Max looks at the face again and thinks he sees an expression of shock. It’s as if — too late to turn back — the man had spotted something he didn’t expect on the other side.

  Control your thoughts, Max thinks. The guy got hit in the chest with a 30-30. What do you expect his face to look like?

  After just six months as a reporter, Max has it figured out: professionalism and thought-control. That’s all you need. Especially thought-control — don’t let your thoughts prevent you from reporting objectively. So Max concentrates on “the scene”.

  There’s an open triangular cardboard box next to the gun. Looking past it, Max can see bits of red light from the Canadian Tire sign across the street penetrating the tangle of sodden branches. Fuck. He must have bought the gun at Canadian Tire, carried it in its box across the parking lot and then the street and walked into the woods. Max wonders how long he sat alone with his new gun before pressing it to his chest and pushing the trigger.

  “Bougez pas, mon gars. Don’t move. Police.”

  The new arrival switches on a strong flashlight and points it at Max’s face. His other hand holds a .38 police issue revolver, pointed at the ground.

  The cop recognizes him. “Max? C’est toi?”

  “Ouais.”

  “Tabernac! What are you doing?”

  The flashlight beam swings from Max’s face to the body. Max’s eyes adjust and he recognizes the cop, one of a handful of police acquaintances he’s made on the job.

  “Just doing my job,” Max says.

  “Ah,” the cop says, grinning. “I knew someday you would kill someone just to make a story for yourself. Still, it’s a big bust for me, eh?”

  “You think it’s a murder?” Max asks.

  The cop laughs. “Hey, this is not Hawa
ii Five-O. In LaSalle, you find a guy like this, it’s suicide. Point finale.”

  “Where’s the guy who phoned it in?”

  “It was kids. They took off for sure. And you, too. Get out before my partner shows up. He doesn’t like it when reporters get to a scene before him.”

  The cop suddenly shifts his gaze back to the body. He walks over to it and bends down.

  “Chalice.”

  “You know him?” Max asks.

  “Yeah. Like I know you. From work. I arrested him a couple times for shoplifting. Good guy. Always had something nice to say. Congratulated me on my promotion.”

  “While you’re cuffing him, he’s saying congratulations on your promotion?”

  “Yep. He had big problems, but he was okay. He was always talking about his plan to go to La Tuque and be a lumberjack.”

  “Let me guess, he always wore a lumberjack shirt?”

  “Yep. Like that one,” he says. He goes down on one knee and moves the body’s head just enough to avoid the raindrops.

  They can hear the cop’s partner crashing through the brush, calling out. Max says goodnight, takes about two dozen steps toward the Canadian Tire sign and finds himself on a sidewalk. The transition to normalcy is crazy fast.

  It’s the homestretch. All Max has to do is get back to the newsroom, file the briefs and then he can head downtown with the Veteran Reporter and the elderly Copy Editor for their ritual post-publication drunk. Max is fond of the Copy Editor, who is his first mentor, and looks forward to hanging out with him on Saturday nights. But recently, for some reason, Max has come to anticipate the company of the Veteran Reporter just as much.