Max's Folly

by Bill Turpin

  “Good idea, but I’ll stay here.”

  “No-no-no. That is really stupid. If you get caught after curfew, anything’s possible.”

  “I don’t care. I’m going to see this through.”

  “I did not know you could be so stubborn when we started this trip,” his friend says. “Stay here. Do not move for any reason. We will come and get you. In an emergency, try to run into the cathedral. Maybe a priest will save you. Maybe not.”

  • • •

  Max feels it’s dark enough to safely poke his head all the way above the parapet. A squad of cops block the spot where he encountered the guard. In the last of the light, he sees a black jeep armed with a .50-calibre machinegun pull up. The driver and the gunman wear white kerchiefs over their faces.

  The kerchiefs are a bad sign, Max thinks.

  The streetlights flicker and go dark. Max can hear combat boots tramping below him, but can see nothing. Young voices begin chanting “Abajo con la junta!”

  “Quatro!” someone says. The word was saw-toothed with rage.

  Max sees four muzzle flashes before he hears the gun. The street goes bright orange and maybe half a second later Max hears the gun go off. Choom-choom-choom-choom, four times. In the aftermath Max hears brick and glass tinkling to the ground. For the first time in his life, Max hears the sound of adults screaming. The sounds propel him to the ground even though he is well out of the line of fire. Max gathers himself and creeps back to his post.

  The same angry voice yells for more shots. Choom-choom. Choom-choom-choom-choom. The orange muzzle flashes illuminate the pall of smoke from the previous volleys. Low moans and sobs take the place of the screaming.

  Max leans against the stone, facing the church. Combat boots thunder. Orders are bellowed, but Max’s Spanish isn’t up to the job. He thinks he hears someone ask if there are dead in the cafeteria, but he can’t be sure. He thinks he hears someone else say “six”, but the Spanish word for it is too easily lost in the commotion to be certain.

  It occurs to him that he could go down the hill and try to bluster his way in with his homemade “international press pass” and find out what happened. Or he can say he got lost coming back from the cathedral.

  His arms and legs veto both ideas.

  “Max, you don’t have that kind of courage,” they say. “This is where you belong. Up on a hill, looking down at the action.”

  The struggle between the coward and the indestructible reporting machine with the speed of a gazelle and eyes of an eagle begins. Round one goes to the coward.

  So Max lets his head rest on the cobblestones of the church plaza and stares at the sparkling black mountain sky, aware only that he is lost somewhere in the middle of all that, 8,000 feet above sea level, whirling with his planet in a circle at 1,000 miles an hour. It’s a beautiful moment, about to be linked forever with Max the Coward.

  And so the reporting machine wins round two.

  He’s starting back down the stone stairs toward the college, rehearsing his lost tourist story when someone grabs his shoulder from behind.

  “What the hell are you doing, man?” The Photog’s words are urgent, laced with disbelief.

  Max spots the Doorman coming up behind his friend: “What’s he doing here?”

  “There is more to him than meets the eye, I think,” the Photog replies.

  “You should have seen that gun,” Max says. “Jesus Christ. Ten shots. It’s like a fucking cannon. Somebody’s dead for sure, but I don’t know how many.”

  “And you think they are going to tell you? Because I’m telling you, if you go down there, you may disappear from the face of the planet.”

  Max’s mind goes blank for a second. “No. Not this time. This time I’m going to follow through.”

  “The curfew’s on,” the Photog says. “File your story and then we’ll have a beer.”

  “I don’t HAVE a story. I’ve got cops wearing bandanas firing a big machine-gun into a school cafeteria. ‘And then what happened Max?’ the Bureau Chief will ask me. ‘Oh, jeez, I dunno, eh? It was a school night and I had to get to bed. But I’m pretty sure someone must have been hurt.’”

  The Photog’s voice is flat: “Then you’re on your own, for now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see if we can save your life.”

  • • •

  Max decides to stick with the turista bit and casually heads back down the stone stairway. His friend with the Nazi helmet spots him right away and rushes up. At first Max cannot tell whether his expression reveals alarm or disappointment at being deceived. He concludes it must be the former because he protects Max from the view of other cops.

  He looks around frantically, then grabs Max by the arm and marches him across the street, trying to make it look like he’s merely redirecting someone who’s stumbled onto the scene.

  “Fast-fast-fast, Señor,” he says.

  They arrive at the door to an apartment building; the guard opens it and all but throws Max into the lobby.

  “Go up. Up,” he says. “You must stay. Okay?”

  Before Max can say anything, the guard hustles back to his post.

  Inside Max can see the dim outlines of a courtyard with three floors above it. Everything is tiled and open to the air.

  Max figures the guard’s advice — “up” — is smart. He climbs the stairs to the third floor, which ought to have a good view of the street. He taps gently on the door of an apartment overlooking the street.

  In a few moments he hears someone walking softly to the door.

  “Quien es?” says a quiet male voice.

  “Periodista,” Max whispers.

  “You are a journalist?” the man says.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have identification?”

  Max slides his ridiculous Prensa Internacional card under the door. It opens and a guy about Max’s age lets him into the apartment, which is dark except for a couple of candles.

  There is a dish of untouched paella on the dining table and a young woman, presumably the wife of his host, is on the floor peeking out the window. When she turns to Max he can see that she has been crying.

  The introductions are hushed.

  “You are Canadian?” the man says in astonishment. “This is a crazy night.”

  The guy says they are both teachers at the community college. Geography for her, math for him. They are less than thrilled to be entertaining a foreign correspondent on this particular evening and aren’t sure what to say.

  Max asks for a turn by the window. He sees police vehicles everywhere. Cops are running back and bellowing orders and cursing. They have set up a large canvas tent to obscure the college entrance. The opening on Max’s side is blocked by a troop transport truck. There are holes in the side of the building, some of them easily two feet in diameter.

  “Are there any dead?” Max asks.

  The guy translates and his wife responds with a torrent of heartbroken Spanish.

  “She says: ‘How can there not be dead?’”

  “I heard someone say six dead,” Max says.

  “I did not hear anything like that, nor did my wife,” the guy says fiercely.

  Bullshit, Max thinks. He spots a phone.

  “Can you connect me with the hospitals?” he asks.

  After some back and forth, the guy agrees. There are no English speakers at the first hospital but, at Max’s urging, his host extracts the information that four wounded students are being treated there. No dead.

  At the second hospital they find an emergency room doctor who trained in Miami. Max can hear cries and other sounds of chaos when his host hands him the phone.

  “I can tell you with certainty that I have seven wounded students here. I am certain they came from the community college,” she says. “A few are
very badly wounded. There is a girl who has lost her leg.”

  Max asks about dead.

  “Here, the police don’t bring their dead to hospitals,” she says. “That’s because we don’t do resurrections, but we do keep very good records. I don’t expect anyone here will die.”

  Max gets a few details about injuries and hangs up. He gives the couple $10 American and asks if he can use their phone to call the capital. The Bureau Chief takes the new information and tells Max to go home.

  But Max has another idea. He thanks his relieved hosts, runs down the stairs and walks calmly toward the troop truck, holding his press card in the air.

  “I want to talk to El Mago,” he tells the disbelieving driver.

  1987

  Keeping the Bad Man at Bay

  IT’S 2 A.M. MAX is awakened by the realization that something in the household is amiss. It reminds him of when the Son was an infant, when he and the Wife worried that he would stop breathing in the night.

  The Wife is sleeping comfortably, so he gets out of bed quietly, listening for intruders and sniffing for smoke. Nothing. But when he checks the Son’s room, he finds it empty. The boy’s jeans and his all-protective Montreal Canadiens sweatshirt are missing from the hooks on the back of his door.

  Max refuses to even entertain the possibility that something bad is happening to the Son.

  When his search brings him to the ground floor, he sees that the deadbolt on the front door is open. He gets on his toes, looks through the decorative glass and spots the Son. He’s sleeping on a lawn chair in his Canadiens shirt, holding his baseball bat in his lap.

  Max kisses the top of his head and gently strokes his hair until the boy awakens and gazes at his father with adoring brown eyes. Max wonders how much longer he will be God in the Son’s world.

  “What’s up, buddy?” Max asks.

  “I’m guarding our house against the bad man,” he says sleepily. “If he comes, I can hit him with my bat, but only if I have to.”

  Max knows what’s on the boy’s mind. All the media have been covering the story of a man who breaks into people’s houses. Some householders have awoken to find him staring at them in their beds. Most were just robbed, but the police are concerned that the intruder might eventually hurt someone.

  At work, Max has taken several phone calls from readers of the Other Paper complaining that the Paper is frightening children with its coverage. They always acknowledge that the Other Paper is carrying the same story, and can never explain why only Max’s paper is scaring kids.

  The Son read the Paper today and watched the television news. He asked Max and the Wife, separately, about the intruder. They told him it was nothing to worry about, but that apparently wasn’t enough.

  “I didn’t know you were so worried,” Max tells him now.

  “Just a little bit, Daddy.”

  “Well, you can’t do guard duty on a school night,” Max says. “So, let me take you upstairs back to bed, and I’ll take my turn guarding the house. Nobody can get past me, right?”

  “Oh, I know,” he says, as if this is knowledge shared by all sentient beings. “But I heard Mommy say you need to rest.”

  Upstairs, Max puts the little guy to bed and retrieves his copy of The Handmaid’s Tale from the master bedroom. He wakes up the Wife and explains.

  “Oh, Maxie. You’ll be exhausted in the morning.”

  “If I’m not out there, he’ll know it and be terrified all night.”

  It’s not clear why the front porch is the best place to intercept the bad man, but Max spends the rest of the night there reading and being grateful for the pleasant weather. He keeps the bat with him.

  At 6:30 sharp, seconds after his Garfield alarm clock goes off, the Son is downstairs checking on his father.

  • • •

  At work, the consensus is that Max should buy a dog. Every boy should have one anyway.

  At bedtime, Max again takes up his post on the porch. An hour later, as Max anticipated, the Son comes down to make sure Max is on the job.

  “Everything okay, Daddy?”

  “All clear, buddy. See you in the morning.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yep?”

  “I don’t think we need to guard the house tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “By then, the bad man will know that you live here,” the boy says, punching his right fist into his palm. “And once he knows, he’ll stay away.”

  “You sure he’ll know?” Max asks.

  “Ohhh . . . he’ll know alright.” The Son gives him a hug and charges back up to his bed.

  And Max plunges back into his book, grateful for the privilege of doing his fatherly duty but alert for signs of the bad man.

  You never know, he thinks.

  1995

  Holy Threat

  HAVING LOADED THE dishes into the “marriage-saver” and sent the Son upstairs to do his homework, Max uncorks a bottle of Bordeaux and sits close to the Wife on the loveseat.

  “You know, they make red wine in places like Chile and California. Even in Nova Scotia,” she says.

  “Oh,” says Max. “I can re-cork it, if you like.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” She holds out her glass.

  “When the French run out of wine that I like, I’ll shop around,” Max says. “But so far, so good.”

  “Max, I’m a little bit worried about something.”

  The Wife tells him that the Archbishop took her aside after a university board meeting that afternoon.

  “And was His Most Venal Excellency his usual slithery self?” Max asks.

  The Wife says he praised her for being so careful in her writing in news releases and other communications items.

  “He said I was precise and careful about how it might affect others,” she says.

  Max, on the other hand, is quite careless, he had told her.

  “He said your ‘musings on abortion’ are very harmful. He said he’s worried about the effects they might have on my career if they became a board matter.”

  Max gets the Archbishop’s point right away.

  “He wants me to spike a story on a pederast priest,” he tells her. “But I’ve never written about abortion. He could be referring to the miscarriage column, but that’s crazy. It was a long time ago.”

  The Wife wearily covers her face with her hands. “The word ‘abortion’ was in the headline, wasn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, all he has to do is wave the clipping in the faces of the board members,” she says. “Once they see that word in large type, you can stick a fork in my job. The board doesn’t like controversy. Peace over principle.”

  “Why wasn’t there an uproar when the column was published?” Max asks.

  “Because it was innocuous and because back then people like university governors didn’t read the goddamn Paper.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t see that coming.”

  “Not your fault. Have you got a plan?”

  “Maybe,” he says. “But you may not like it.”

  She kisses him lightly on the lips.

  “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. Do it.”

  “What about your job?”

  “We’re white and middle class. We won’t starve.”

  The Wife refills her wine glass and bangs the bottle down on the counter like a movie cowboy. “What the world needs, Max, is an H-bomb that only kills shitheads. Maybe every 10 years or so we could set some off. There would be a few bright flashes, and a bit of a mess to clean up, and then the rest of us could get on with being human for a while.”

  Max kisses her forehead and she responds with a long hug.

  Max hears his own voice in his head: “Here. This will do. Let it be here.”

  • • •

  The ne
xt morning, as always, Max heads straight for the City Desk hoping it has found some fresh news for him. The City Editor is wearing a puffy, flowered dress complemented by fire-engine red hair.

  “Uh, you’re not wearing a crinoline, are you?” he asks, immediately regretting it.

  The City Editor pretends to be making notes, reading aloud as she goes.

  “And then he asked if a crinoline might irritate, quote, my long, smooth thighs . . .”

  “Okay,” says Max. “Let’s start again. I see that, as always, you are appropriately dressed this morning.”

  He asks how Mother Mary is doing on the Father Peter story.

  “She’s stuck,” is the answer. “He appeared in provincial court at seven a.m. last week and received a discharge on a complaint of simple assault. He flew to Toronto the same morning, but that’s all we’ve got.”

  “He was in court at seven a.m.? How is that possible?”

  “Court is in session whenever it wants to be,” she says.

  Max retrieves his contact book from his jacket pocket and shows her a long international number.

  “Let me see if I can help. Would you please ask reception to set up a call for me to this number?”

  Being the City Editor, she is not satisfied that she has all the information that is her due.

  “London? What’s up?”

  “Does anyone around here just do what they’re asked?” Max says.

  The City Editor reminds him that he does the hiring and firing and, besides, it’s the nature of the journalistic beast. Max looks skyward.

  “It’s called the Western Centre for Counter-terrorism.”

  “Ooh. Anyone in particular, or just the nearest counter-terrorist?”

  “Just tell them it’s Max calling for El Mago.”

  Now he has her full attention. The smart-ass banter is gone. Max heads for the office.

  “Wait! What’s going on? This sounds great. Come on, tell me. Please! Yes, I am wearing a crinoline. Please!”

  “Sorry,” Max says, waving his hand without turning around. “I’ve already said too much. It’s a matter of provincial security.”