Hangman

by Michael Slade

  The Hershey bar was gone.

  Mary drained the Coke.

  Then Mary waddled from the window to the entry hall to grab another chocolate bar from the bowl of treats.

  Eating made her feel better.

  Eating made her fat.

  If only her eating disorder were anorexia.

  With Mary, however, guilt forced her to munch, munch, munch.

  To distract her mind from the despair she felt about her life, Mary Konrad had thrown herself into Halloween. The entry hall of the front door was now the creepy haunt of a wicked, withered witch. Black paper lined the ceiling and walls, and black lights made everything white glow unnaturally. Against the black, she had hung a skeleton of rattling bones and an army of eyeballs dangling from strings. Each eye was a ping-pong ball painted with a black pupil and a blue iris besieged by a network of red veins. A huge black cauldron boiled with dry ice, and from stereo speakers came whispers, sighs, groans, sobs, shrieks, and screams.

  Hanging the skeleton had made her cry.

  With an Oh Henry! bar in one hand and a Milky Way in the other, Mary returned to the living room to draw the blinds. The first of the trick-or-treaters were out on the sidewalk, three small ghosts in flapping sheets coming her way, followed by an adult wearing Grim Reaper robes, the hood a black maw that masked his or her face.

  Death approaches, Mary thought as she shut out the night.

  I wonder if the kids in the sheets know why it is Halloween?

  That was the curse of the city.

  Disconnection from roots.

  People went through the motions without asking what they were doing.

  Halloween in the city had become as commercial as Christmas.

  Spend, spend, spend.

  But underneath, bankrupt.

  Back in the hall, waiting for the knock of the ghosts on the door, Mary plunked the pointed hat on her head, stirred the cauldron to swirl up more mist and recalled what Granny O’Grady had told her on the porch.

  “Christianity came to the Celts with the Roman Catholic Church. What had been the Samhain festival of November 1 was declared from then on to be All Saints’—or All Hallows—Day. So the night before became All Hallows Eve, and that was shortened over time to Halloween.”

  Knock, knock …

  Knock, knock …

  Death was at the door.

  Mary let out a cackle as she had once done for Granny.

  “Come in, come in, my lovelies,” Mary beckoned in a creaky voice.

  The knob turned.

  The door squeaked open.

  A rusty hinge was taped to it for effect.

  In stepped the first ghost, cautiously, eyes in the sheet slits fixed on Mary. The white sheet, the white eyes, glowed eerily in the ultraviolet glare. As the ghost approached the table of treats next to the bubbling cauldron, the shadow of the witch fell over it.

  “Who’s Samhain?” Mary asked, barking out lusty cackles.

  The head in the sheet shook.

  “Away with you!”

  The ghost grabbed a Mars bar and vamoosed.

  “Who’s Pomona?” Mary asked the second spook.

  “Dunno,” said the hole in the sheet.

  “Away with you, too!”

  Off ran the ghost with a tiny packet of M&Ms.

  “Do you know what Halloween means?” Mary asked the third specter.

  Another shake of the sheet.

  “Begone!” she croaked.

  And it was with a Snickers bar.

  The mist from the cauldron was really swirling now, filling the front hall with murky iridescence. Mary heard the hinge squeak as the door swung shut, then tensed as that was followed by the clicking of the deadbolt.

  A hand appeared in the mist.

  Pointing a gun at her.

  “Ask me”—Mary jumped—“if I know what Halloween means.”

  The outline of the Grim Reaper materialized in the fog. Whoever it was had used the ghosts to hide behind. The voice came from beyond a mask buried in the hood. The closer Death came to Mary, the deeper into the dark maw penetrated the black light, until the mask jumped out at her.

  What Mary faced was this:

  The Lamp of Freedom

  Vancouver

  Tonight

  Jeffrey Kline, Esq.

  Barrister-at-law.

  Hear my name in those terms and what do you think? Upper-class kid, West Side education, candy-ass school like Lord Byng or Prince of Wales, law degree from UBC out on Point Grey?

  Dollars to donuts, you think I’m a silver spoon. But you’re wrong.

  The East End is me.

  So let me tell you what it was like to grow up in Strathcona.

  In the beginning, Vancouver was a Native campsite called Kumkumalay. Translation: “Big-leaf maple trees.” In 1865, Captain Stamp selected the site for a sawmill. Shortly thereafter, Gassy Jack arrived. Gassy got his name from talking incessantly when he was drunk, and rolling in with him came the only barrel of whiskey for fifteen miles. He offered some idle mill workers all they could guzzle in a sitting if they would help him build a pub, and twenty-four hours later the Globe Saloon was awash in alcohol. With the harbor in front and False Creek behind, the bar, situated where five paths joined to form Maple Tree Square, soon became the anchor of Vancouver’s skid row: a row of flophouse hotels and notorious booze cans named after the skid road used for dragging logs up to Hastings Mill. What spawned around the row was a rowdy, rough-and-tumble shantytown, where loggers, miners, and fishermen could drink and get laid. A sailor boozing at Gassy Jack’s became our first murder, and lots of those killed in this city today still die within a few blocks of Hastings and Main.

  Got the picture?

  The history of my ’hood?

  And that was the golden age, before Strathcona went to shit.

  A little geography will put me in place.

  North to south you have the mountains, the harbor, the city, and the river. South from the harbor to False Creek and beyond, Main Street cuts Vancouver into west and east. West is where the British spread in those early years, and where the powers that be in this town wheel and deal today. East is where the have-nots scurried to find a home, and where the down-and-outs currently huddle.

  The West Side and the East End …

  Worlds apart.

  Lord Strathcona was a British imperialist who made a bundle off the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Named for him, the ’hood, you might say, got the sweat off his balls and little more. Strathcona was the entry point for floods of immigrants: Japanese, Chinese, Italians and Jews, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, blacks, Hispanics, and so on. A cosmopolitan potpourri, liberals might say. A welcome example of the brotherhood of man. A ’hood boasting the Ritter Project for those of low income, in one splendid apartment of which I grew up.

  Hey, I was just a kid.

  What did I know?

  You want to call it renewal, go ahead.

  To me, the Ritter Project was a squalid slum.

  I never knew my father. He screwed my mom and ran. I hardly knew my mother. She OD’d on heroin when I was six. All I knew was Gram, who used to be a whore. A pro on the row who thought the worst of men. Still, I think Gram did her best for me.

  We lived in this claustrophobic box high up in the tower. To call the elevator, you sparked two live wires together, then ascended through a gagging succession of smells, like bad cooking, vomit, piss, and condoms used by teens at night on the stairs. A hot summer day would combine them into the worst stench of all and waft it up to our open windows. Close the windows and you would roast to death. Cockroaches were rife, and every light left unprotected was broken. As for graffiti, guess how I learned to read?

  The tower was surrounded by several low-rises. All were hellholes, but the tower was the worst. I remember one day the cops caught the kid next door shoplifting a coat, so he was driven home to be placed in the care of his parents. The cops arrived to find his father passed ou
t drunk at the door, so pissed he hadn’t been able to find his key. The kid found the key in his dad’s pocket and helped him inside, the upshot being that the cops left the parent in the care of the child.

  Actually, the kid was boosting stuff for his older brother. Since young offenders merely got a slap on the wrist, the hard-core punks stayed out of jail by using them as mules.

  I envied the kid next door.

  At least he had a dad.

  Another day, the cops responded to a “shots fired” on the floor below. While searching for the shooter, they found two youngsters living alone in one apartment. A hunt revealed their mother shacked up with a biker across town. Garbage was piled four feet high in every room. A maze of corridors was how the kids moved around. To get rid of the smell, the project had to take the apartment out. Literally take it out—walls, ceiling, floor, guts, and all.

  We hoped that would put an end to the cockroaches, but it didn’t.

  Lord Strathcona Elementary was my school. The lord drove the last spike of the CPR in 1885, according to Mr. Pritchard in socials class. One day the kid sitting beside me was bored by such history, so he set fire to the hair of the kid in front of him. Mr. Pritchard broke his leg in a skiing accident. On crutches, he worked at the blackboard with his back to us. The kid on my other side pushed a pin through an eraser, then threw it full force to jab Mr. Pritchard behind the ear. I recall his crutches flying out like the wings of a bird. Next time we saw him, both legs were in casts and he was confined to a wheelchair.

  Ergo, he took our class to court.

  To drive home what happened to kids who refused to toe the line.

  Three things struck me as we sat in Kinky’s court. One, a court wasn’t a solemn, somber, serious place. It was the best free show in town. Two, the lawyers were all chubby, while Mudge was a skinny and ill-fed runt like me. The fat cats of the legal profession had never missed a meal. And three, the lawyers were a network of pantywaists: powdered and pampered West Side boys, weaned off silver spoons. I knew I could take the whole lot down in an East End brawl.

  A West Side brawl?

  That’s an oxymoron.

  Then and there, I knew I could better them at the legal game.

  The problem was how to get from the Ritter Project to the bar.

  Britannia Secondary was my high school. Gangs were endemic to the East End. The H Squad (or Heavy Squad)—police armed with baseball bats—had crushed the Clark Park Gang by my time, and the consequent void was filled by gangs of ethnic refugees. Hispanics from Central America hefted cojones as big as grapefruit. Vietnamese boat kids were pirates at heart. The Chinese were trying to get into triads. And the Russian mafia was worse than Don Corleone’s. Other whites were “sidewalk bikers” hoping to make the gang, for the Angels by then had absorbed Satan’s Choice, the Coffin Cheaters, and Hell’s Rebels. This being Canada, guns were rare. But then, a gun is the coward’s weapon of choice. Too much distance between cause and effect. Those into wet work preferred a knife, thrilling to shivers that shuddered along the blade. Junk peddled on the street had sunk to a measly 1.5 percent, so Ts&Rs was the popular high. T stood for Talwin, a synthetic opiate analgesic painkiller, and R stood for Ritalin, a stimulant. A Ts&Rs was mixed by crushing two and two, and was mainlined like heroin. Ritalin gave it a nasty edge, which pumped the punks for vicious work with their flashing blades.

  That was the minefield of my school.

  Study, study, study—that was me.

  Work, work, work to pay my way.

  Stay alive; grab the chance; keep your nose clean.

  And hey, I made it.

  Read my card.

  Jeffrey Kline, Esq.

  Barrister-at-law.

  Every chance I got to break away from school would find me sitting in a court gallery, absorbing more law than I did at UBC. The provincial courthouse was nearby on Main, and it was home to another “hanging judge.” No capitals, he was lowercase, to distinguish him from Hanging Judge Kinky of high-court fame.

  This hanging judge got his name from sentencing a shoplifter who was a deaf-mute. Sign language explained the proceedings to the accused. “Don’t tell the accused what I’m about to say,” the judge warned the translator before he passed sentence.

  “The sentence imposed by this court is that you be taken from here to the place whence you came, and there be kept in close confinement until the first day of the next month, and upon that date that you be taken to the place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

  The judge grinned slyly. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” he said. Then he passed the real sentence, a nominal fine, and told the translator to translate to the deaf-mute.

  There must be a kick to be had from passing a sentence of death, for the next time I sat in that judge’s court I witnessed a variation.

  A member of a youth gang taunted the judge. “This is my first offense. You can’t do nothin’ to me. Let’s get this over so I can party, eh?”

  The judge pronounced the same death sentence that he had on the deaf-mute, then swept his arm toward the holding cell. “Take him down,” he ordered.

  No sooner was the stunned teen whisked away than the prosecutor was on her feet. “You can’t do that, Judge. We don’t have the death penalty, and the maximum for that offense is six months.”

  “The court of appeal will reverse me,” agreed the hanging judge. “But I sure put the scare of hell into that little jerk.”

  You think I’m kidding?

  I shit you not.

  Except for the nuthouse, prison, and the stock exchange, the legal profession has more psychopaths than anywhere else.

  The word “fuck” plays a major role in court. I sat in on a new judge’s first day on the bench. Having just thrown the book at an armed robber, he realized that he had failed to ask the convict if he had anything to say before sentence. So he asked him after.

  “Yeah, I got somethin’ to say,” the con shot back. “You’re a fuckin’ asshole!”

  The judge got up from the bench and was leaving court, then he stopped, turned, and said to the man, “That, sir, was just a lucky guess.”

  Another day, I had a seat in Tin Ear’s court. He was dubbed Tin Ear because he was hard of hearing. “Do you have anything to say before I sentence you?” asked the elderly judge.

  “Fuck all!” replied the con in the dock.

  “What did he say?” Tin Ear asked the court clerk.

  “He said, ‘Fuck all,’ my lord.”

  “That’s strange,” retorted the judge. “I was sure he said something.”

  Another day, I was sitting in Prissy’s court. The judge got the name Prissy because he didn’t like dirty words. A complainant in a rape case was on the witness stand. She testified: “Then the accused said something disgusting to me.”

  “Stop!” ordered Prissy. “There are students in my court today. Crown counsel will give you pen and paper to write down what he said.”

  Scribble, scribble. The witness wrote.

  The note with the offending words passed from the complainant to the court clerk, then up to Prissy, who shook his head with disgust, then down to the lawyers, who held it so I could see the words from the gallery, then across to the jury, where, juror to juror, it was passed along.

  What the woman had scribbled was this: “Hang on to your hat, baby. I’m going to fuck you till your ears fall off.”

  Seated in the back row of the jury box was a buxom babe. Bouffant red curls tumbling down in ringlets. Green eyes buried behind false lashes. Bee-sting lips and tits out to there. She read the note and raised a brow that said all men are pigs, then nudged the juror beside her in the ribs and passed it on.

  He was a geezer, Methuselah’s age. Bald but for a fringe of hair, with a big Adam’s apple. The trial had put him to sleep and he awoke from slumber to find the babe in the next seat slipping him a note. Reading it produced an effect like Viagra. He g
ave her a smile, gave her a wink, then folded the note and put it in his pocket, sitting back with a look of forthcoming satisfaction.

  Sometimes I’d ride the bus to New Westminster so I could watch a yee-haw case from the rural Bible belt up the Fraser valley.

  My favorite was the farmer who was charged with bestiality after he got amorous with one of his cows. The offense was witnessed by the preacher next door. Testimony was that the farmer placed a milk stool behind the cow, then he stood on it to perform the act. Coitus interruptus was the result when the cow kicked over the stool to knock her lover on his ass.

  A farmer in the jury box slapped his knee.

  “They’ll do that every time!” he chortled.

  Ah, yes, juries.

  Those flickering lamps of freedom.

  Who can put it better than Britain’s Lord Devlin? “No tyrant could afford to leave a subject’s freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen. So that trial by jury,” wrote the law lord, “is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.”

  The trouble with flickering lamps is that some snuff out.

  And that, truth be known, is what led to my breakthrough murder case.

  When you think about it, is trial by jury not an anachronism in this technical age? Twelve—why twelve?—folks are chosen at random to try an accused. Weighing evidence is new to them, and some—as a wag once delicately put it—are “unaccustomed to severe intellectual exercise or to protracted thought.” Yet these twelve act as the sole judges of the facts, and they need give no reasons for what they decide.

  In the beginning, a juror was a man compelled by the king to take an oath. The Normans brought the procedure to England in 1066. At first, a juror was a man who knew the facts, and the oath compelled him to tell the king the truth on penalty of damnation. King Henry II turned jurors into a jury, for if there was a dispute over land, the first man to get twelve oaths in his favor won. That was the origin of trial by jury, including the rule that the verdict of twelve must be unanimous. Later, juries evolved from facts known to evidence received.