by Darren Hynes
Hollywood crowd,
Wayne Pumphrey
Dear Marjorie,
I very rarely write three letters in a single sitting but I just wanted to say that I liked lying down with you and—
A knock on his bedroom door.
“Hold on a second.”
“Comin’ in.”
“Hang on!”
… and I’ve also been thiking thinking more about that song and you’re right about us being creeps.
Your friend the creep,
Wayne Pumphrey
The door opens.
Wayne closes his notebook.
“You naked in here?”
“No.”
Wanda walks into the room: iPod, track pants, T-shirt, and recently polished toenails. A Diet Coke with a straw in her hand. “Whatcha writing?”
“A letter.”
“Email would save you postage, you know.”
“I’m not sending it.”
“You’re not, eh? No point if no one reads it.”
Wayne doesn’t say anything.
Wanda plops down on the bed. Sips her Coke. “So me and stupid cow Stephanie are going again.”
“When?”
“End of May.”
“Oh.”
“I won’t be like Mom: packing my bags till I’m eighty, then it’s too late.” Wanda lifts a foot and blows on her nails and says, “You like this colour?”
Wayne shrugs.
“I mixed the red and green, but I’m not sure it works.”
“What do I know about that stuff?”
“I’ll be doing a lot of this sort of thing when I open my own salon: experimenting with colours and hairstyles and whatnot. I think I’ll have rock music playing 24/7. Wouldn’t you love to get your hair cut in a place like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Everyone will want to come: actors, hockey players, rock stars. Especially rock stars and they’ll all want to date me seein’ as I’m a piece of gear and everything, and I’ll let them. Be rich, I will. You’ll be jealous.”
“Whatever.”
Wanda gets up and goes to the window and looks out. With her back to Wayne, she says, “Mom said you brought that girl from up the street to Woolworths.”
“Marjorie.”
“Yeah—her.”
“We had fries. Pepsi in tall glasses.”
“She your girlfriend?”
“No.”
Wanda sips more Coke. “Fuckin’ place, eh? Ice and snow and that cloud of iron ore shit and it’s so fucking cold you gotta walk back to the wind and why in God’s name would anyone choose to live here?”
“I don’t know.”
Wanda turns around. “They say her mother’s not right in the head.”
“Hmm?”
“What’s-her-name from up the street.”
“Marjorie.”
“Yeah—her.”
“It’s on account of her nerves.”
“Really?”
“She’s depressed.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Bad nerves can kill you.”
“Everything kills you … living in this house.” Wanda goes back and sits on the bed. “I suppose you’ve heard the rumours.”
Wayne doesn’t say whether he has or hasn’t.
“A friend of a friend’s mother—who’s a Jehovah’s Witness by the way and never lies—says she caught what’s-her-name lying beside the deep freeze with her pants around her ankles.”
“Shut up.”
“Just saying what I heard.”
“Shouldn’t believe everything you hear.” Silence.
Wanda crushes her Coke can. “Don’t breathe a word about me and Stephanie or I’ll cut out your tongue. All we need is for her minister father to get wind of it again. Ship her to Bible prison and brand a cross onto her tit or something.” Wanda looks down at her feet. “Nope, don’t like this colour.” She stands up and heads to the door and grabs the knob, but doesn’t open it. “She ever mention her own father? What’s-her-name from up the street?”
“Marjorie.”
“Yeah—her.”
“Sometimes.”
“What does she say?”
Wayne pauses. “That it wasn’t an accident.”
Wanda lets the doorknob go. “I heard that too.”
Quiet.
“How then?” Wayne says.
“It was pretty hush-hush in the news, but my friend of a friend’s mother who’s a Jehovah’s Witness and never lies says he jumped.”
“Jumped?”
“Slipped is what they reported, but jumped is what this lady said. For a while they thought he was going to make it, but he died before they could get him to St. John’s.”
Neither of them speaks for ages.
“Jumped where?” Wayne finally says.
“The water tower.” Then, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Wanda puts her earphones back in. “Be careful.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.” She presses play on her iPod and pulls open the door and leaves.
Dear Marjorie,
Is it true? Did your dad jump? Why didn’t you say anything? YOU don’t have any intention of doing that, do you?
There I was enjoying Orion’s Belt and Canning’s lights and I bet all you were thinking about was the man with the smile that had no happiness in it standing on the edge with his head down and his hair blowing and his shaking hands at his sides. Was he wearing his wedding ring, or did he want to pretend that no one other than himself was going to be hurt?
Did he regret it on the way down, do you think, or was there nothing? Did it hurt? Wanda says he lived for a little while so what must have been going through his mind or was he in a coma? But they say you can still hear in a coma, so did he listen to the voices of the ambulance people and the doctors and nurses and your mom and you? Did he wish he could wake up and take it all back and try again, because how bad do things have to be to go and do the likes of that?
Does it bring you comfort to stand in the last place that he stood? Or does it make you miss him more? Does it make you want to jump too?
Your friend who wonders if it makes you want to jump too,
Wayne Pumphrey
FOUR
Wayne wakes for the second time that night, half-expecting to see Marjorie’s mother leering down at him again, but then he remembers he’s in his own bed, so he lies there and stares at the ceiling.
Still half-asleep, Wayne kicks off the bedsheets and makes his way to the hall in the dark. Fingertips along the wall guide him. Around the corner and a light’s on above the stove and his father is leaning against the counter reading from that book again. A cup of tea and an uneaten molasses tart, and when had his father ever left a molasses tart just sitting there?
His dad lifts his eyes from the page. “What are you doing up?”
“Thirsty,” Wayne says, en route to the fridge. He grabs the milk and sets it on the counter and fills a glass and drinks without stopping and some dribbles down his chin and onto his pyjama top. He puts the glass in the sink and starts back to his room, but his father’s voice stops him.
“Hang on.”
Wayne turns around.
His father goes to speak, but doesn’t. Looks down at the floor. Gives it another go. “Has your mother mentioned if she ever plans on speaking to me again?”
Wayne doesn’t say.
“It’s been ages since the cops pulled me over and she’s never gone this long and the foldout’s killing my back, so I’m wondering if maybe this thing’s permanent.”
Silence.
“She hasn’t said anything,” Wayne says.
“Oh.” His father looks away.
Neither speaks for a long time.
The grandfather clock chimes.
His father says, “The fella I talk to says if I keep reading this here book and going to them twelvestep meetings, I’ll never have to take anothe
r drop.”
Wayne stands there and says nothing.
“Would you like that?”
He nods.
“I know: I’m a broken record, but nearly losing stuff changes you, so it’s going to be different this time.” His dad pushes his tart away. “You shouldn’t have been in the car.”
“It’s all right.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t hurt.”
“The sin’s not less because it turned out okay.” His father closes the book and massages his face and then braces himself against the counter. “Go back to bed.”
Wayne goes to leave.
“Just a minute.”
He stops.
“There’s one more thing.”
Wayne waits.
“Naw, nothing, go on to bed—no, stay here, let me just say this last thing and that’ll be the end of it and what it is is: I woke up this morning and I didn’t regret anything from the night before and I can’t remember a time when there was nothing broken I had to sweep up and I’ve been lying to myself and to all of you, so I’m sorry now go to bed and I mean it this time.”
Wayne doesn’t go.
His dad picks his book back up and finds where he left off and starts reading. After a while he says, “Can’t concentrate with you standing there.”
Wayne goes back to his room and climbs into bed and pulls the sheets up and sleeps.
APRIL
Melting Ice
ONE
It’s three-thirty and Wayne’s rushing down the corridor. He stops just inside the main doors and watches the larger-than-normal smoking crowd gathered in the parking lot … some sitting on skidoos, and others, the older kids, leaning against or sitting in their parents’ cars or trucks, elbows resting on the frames of open windows, their jackets unzipped because it’s freakishly warm for the second week of April. Instead of fur-lined moccasins and Sorels, everyone’s in rubber boots and hiking shoes and sneakers and this morning, on the radio, there was a warning to stay off the thinning pond ice.
Wayne breathes deep and then pushes open the doors and runs, his knapsack cutting to the left and then right with each stride. A voice in the distance says, “Where’s the fire, Wayne?” Someone turns up their car radio. He makes it across the parking lot and past the school grounds to the street. He looks back and there’s no one. Because the snow is turning to slush his pant legs are soaked, and somehow water has gotten into one rubber boot, freezing his big toe. He runs past snowbanks lightly sprinkled, it occurs to him, with the same iron ore dust that’s constantly in his father’s moustache and underneath his father’s fingernails.
It’s being left alone since going to Pete’s house that’s making him run now, he knows. The same thing that made him run yesterday and the day before that and all of last week, and it can’t be put into the words of a letter, but it’s there.
The sound of an approaching vehicle brings Wayne back, as does the voice saying, “Where you off to in such a hurry, Pumphrey?”
Then the car cuts Wayne off and stops and Pete The Meat’s in the passenger side and Bobby’s driving. Harvey and Kenny are in the back.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to avoid me, Pumphrey,” says Pete.
He thinks about making a run for it and it must show on his face, because Pete says, “Don’t even try it.”
The Meat licks his almost-a-moustache and says, “Hey, you like Bobby’s car? Well, it’s his dad’s really, but his old man’s pulling a double at the mine, so Bobby’s got it.”
No one says anything.
Then Pete says, “I asked you a question, Pumphrey.”
“Yeah,” goes Bobby, “Pete asked you something.”
“Yes,” Wayne says, trying to catch his breath.
“Yes, what?” goes The Meat.
“I like Bobby’s car.”
Pete smiles. “Yeah, it’s not too shabby, eh? Lots of leg room. You should see the trunk.” After a while he says, “You didn’t think I’d let you get away with it, did you, Pumphrey? Sorry if you got that impression.” He turns to the others. “Like I told you boys: he was sitting in my kitchen, eating my Rice Krispie squares. Fucker.”
Bobby shakes his head and revs the engine and says, “Pretty stupid thing you did, Pumphrey, going to Pete The Meat’s house.”
“Should have been there, boys … his father smiling at me and saying that Wayne here’s weaker than the rest of us.” Pete laughs. “His own dad thinks he’s a pussy.”
Bobby laughs and repeats: pussy.
“Had his old man shaking my hand by the end, I did.” Pete looks into Wayne’s eyes and says, “Bet your father wishes you weren’t such a faggot, eh, Pumphrey?”
“Yeah,” Bobby says, “bet that’s what he wishes.”
Pete opens the car door and gets out and goes right up to Wayne and pushes him, and although Wayne goes flying back, he’s able to stay on his feet. Pete pushes him again and this time Wayne goes down and when he tries to get up The Meat knocks him over, so Wayne stays where he is, melting snow soaking his pants.
Pete looks up and down the street, then says, “We’re going to take a little spin, Pumphrey. Nowhere far, don’t worry. Then we’ll drop you off at your house or at Maple Leaf’s or wherever.”
Harvey and Bobby exchange glances and Kenny says, “How is she, by the way?” and Wayne goes to speak, but Pete says, “Tell her that Dominion is pissed about all their wieners going missing.”
“Yeah,” Bobby says, “tell her that.”
“The cops are going to investigate, what I hear. She’ll have to open her snatch and show ’em the goods,” says The Meat.
Bobby, seemingly enjoying the thought of that too much, repeats: “Show ’em the goods.”
After what feels like ages, The Meat tosses a look over his shoulder at Kenny, then back at Wayne, and says, “A snowball’s not gonna cut it this time. And eating yellow snow is starting to get old, don’t you think?”
Wayne stays quiet. His underwear, because of the wet snow, is soaked now, too.
Pete smooths his almost-a-moustache for a while and then turns to the car and nods and suddenly doors open and there are slick footsteps pounding in Wayne’s direction and he’s at once lifted and carried. Kenny’s got his feet, Bobby and Harvey each shoulder. Heavy breathing coming from all around him. His insides shaking. Pete’s shouting orders: “Hurry up, dickwads! Before anyone sees.”
Wayne stares up at the sky, at that middle place between day and night. Always in the middle, he thinks, the land of upside downs and misplaced steps and pointed fingers.
A key fob and a pressed button and the trunk opening like a mouth.
He’s airborne for a moment.
He lands.
The world goes black.
It’s like being under water. Like he’s here, but not, too. Lost somewhere. Muffled voices and he can’t breathe and he wishes there was something to latch on to. It’s having no legs, being in this trunk, or arms. No means of getting to the surface.
Bobby makes a sharp turn and Wayne rolls and something sharp digs into his back and it’s booster cables. Another turn and this time all of Wayne’s insides drop into his feet. Now the car’s in the air and so is Wayne and he lands hard and his wind is knocked out of him. Hoots and hollers from the front. Someone is smacking the roof with a palm or fist. Now the radio’s blaring.
Wayne thinks of what Marjorie said: Each day when the train passes through, I see myself hopping on and it never stops and I never need it to. He imagines grabbing her hand and running through snow and iron ore dust, past soot-stained miners with tipped hard hats and unlaced workboots and convenience stores advertising cheap beer and scratch tickets and Coca-Cola, and along the Trans-Labrador Highway into Quebec and then the Trans-Canada down through Ontario and across the border into New York, to Broadway. Maybe they’d run even farther, all the way to Hollywood where Marjorie’s better than most of that crowd anyway. They’d rent a place and talk about every
thing they’d left behind and never go back. No more Pete The Meat and wiener jokes, closed drapes and Bacardi Dark, packed suitcases and feeling bad about things that can’t be changed.
The car stops and the radio dies and doors open and close and Pete’s laughing and shouting, “Guess who I got in here! Just guess!” Pounding on the roof and more voices—too many to be just Pete and his posse—coming from all directions.
“Not scared in there, are ya?” The Meat says.
Kenny goes, “Bawling like a baby, I bet.”
A girl’s voice goes, “Who’s in there, Pete?”
“Patience, patience,” says The Meat. “Gather round everyone.” Then, “Hurry on.”
“It’s not an animal is it?” someone says.
“I hope not,” says another.
Pete goes, “It’s worse than an animal.”
“Is it dead, whatever you got in there?”
“No, but it may as well be.”
“Open the trunk!” shouts someone.
“What are you waiting for!” cries another.
Then someone says, “He’s bluffing.”
Bobby’s voice: “You’ll see if he’s bluffing.”
“Give you a hint,” Wayne hears The Meat say. “It’s short and skinny.”
“Bobby’s dick!” someone blurts out.
Laughter.
“Shut up!” Bobby says.
The Meat asks the crowd if they’d like another clue and someone tells him to pop the Jesus trunk already, but Pete gives one more hint, saying, “His girlfriend likes to stick wieners in her you know what.”
Quiet for a moment, then someone—a girl— says, “You’re gross, Pete.”
“That’s rude,” says another.
Pete says, “Rude or no, it’s the truth.”
Wayne feels a sharp pain in his toes, then realizes it’s because he’s just kicked the trunk.
The Meat’s voice sounds closer, as if his mouth were in the place where the key goes in. “That’s a touchy spot for you, isn’t it, buddy? Perhaps we oughtta go over and pick her up too, eh?”
Wayne kicks the trunk again.
“She could teach you how she does it—”
Bobby shouts, “That’s my father’s car!”
Wayne isn’t stopping, even using his fists now, too.