I caught Mom staring at me. She swept the back of her hand with her palm and her eyes asked: is this what you want? I looked at Donna who smiled back and wiped her hands on the dishtowel. This could be my life.
“I remember our first supper,” Mom said, “we were just starting out.”
“You tricked me,” Dad called out from the loft, “and now look at us.”
“Yes, look at you,” Mom said, “a happy, grateful Dogrib man. Now get down here and set the table.”
Donna’s folks pulled into the driveway. I saw her Mom in the cab, putting on some lipstick, while her father took off his sunglasses. I could tell he wanted to be somewhere else. They were dressed up real snazzy. Her Dad wore a buttoned up cowboy shirt and it looked freshly ironed. Donna’s Mom had a suit top on and probably slacks cause she worked for the government. I looked at Donna. She blushed, looking at me, waiting for me to say something. Maybe we can do this, I thought.
“I’ll get the door,” I said to Donna. “Your folks are here.”
“Wait.” She put the dishtowel down and walked across the room. She was smiling, looking into my eyes. She brushed by me, took my hand and faced the door. “We should do this together.”
And we did.
The Last Snow of the Virgin Mary
The name is Kevin Garner and dealing isn’t who I am. It’s not who I want to be. But check this out: there are three joints to a gram, ten bucks a joint or thirty bucks a gram. An eighth is three and a half grams. A quarter is five, six, or seven grams depending if you eye it up or weigh it. If you don’t have your weights and you’re making a deal on the spot, a loonie weighs seven grams. A half-ounce—we’re talking dry, fluffy pot here—is two to three fingers. An ounce is four. For wet, stinky, clingy pot, never measure with your fingers as seven grams can look like three. There are always 28 grams on the ounce: 30 bucks a pop. You make 840 bucks if you’re not smokin’ or spending. A half-ounce is 14 grams. You can usually move it for $200. There are 16 ounces to a pound, eight ounces to a half-pound and four ounces to a quarter pound. A pound, or an elbow, you can buy for $3,400 or more if it’s outdoor—that’s hydroponic prices. Clients are willing to pay more if it’s indoor because it’s more potent, more controlled. There are 448 grams in a pound. You can make $13,440 on one pound alone if you sell it by the gram. Do the math. There are some like Stan the Man who can roll a hundred joints from a single ounce—I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it.
I was in the editing suite at the cable TV office. I had the sniffles and I needed my vitamins. A joint laced with a little blow would have been nice. Six smokes left, some ginseng tea. My nose was still dripping from the cold of the hockey arena but I was pleased. The game was a success. Lots of slashing, high sticking and cross checking to keep the sheep happy.
Hockey’s just modern day lacrosse. How come nobody at Hockey Night in Canada talks about that? I’m surprised Don Cherry doesn’t say it’s just a matter of time, folks, before players are allowed to kill one another for public spectacle, so just hang in there, eh!
The first few goals usually tell the tale, but the Spruce Kings lost to Fort Smith. I, nonetheless, shone brighter than a thousand suns. Man, she was cold at the rink.
Torque. Sandy’s physics final exam’s tomorrow and the kid’s stuck on torque. The little guy reminds me of myself when I was that age, and I’m doing my best to nurture and foster. Now torque, as I explained, is the physics of twisting and turning about an axis measured in Newton metres. Christ, I hope he makes it. The hardcore party crowd still doesn’t believe I’m trying to change, that I’m serious about declaring the trailer off limits. I had to run there, get my old VCR tapes beside the porn and WWF archives and lock the doors. That Love Shack of mine was trouble and I had to lose it and the porn. If I was going to be a teacher, I needed a place to study, and if I was gonna get Lona, I’d have to prove to her I could change. Tower’s not too happy I’m quitting either and I really gotta think about this. I owe him six grand and I got nothing to show for it. I’ve been evading his phone calls, even his drive-by’s. He was the one who spoiled me, shouldn’t have given me that kind of freedom. I was the only dealer in town who didn’t pay deposits on the fronts ’cause I had the high school crowd. I saved my best for the regulars, saved the lowest quality for the high school. My fellow grads didn’t know the difference and, really, what were they gonna say? Who were they gonna tell?
This hockey game means everything. Can’t blow it. I got a bag in my packsack, my last ounce on the street. I’m selling out today. All of it. I’m really trying to change. I’m tutoring, laying off the dope and the booze. I’ve had mine, but it’s time to move on. I just gotta be a teacher. Taping and broadcasting this game is my ticket out. When my alarm clock rings in the morning, it might as well be a bugle: I am on a mission and the only thing that’s gonna stop me is a bullet from an elephant gun.
Eleven this morning, head pounding, I walked to the college to get the application forms and who did I see? Goddamn-stuck-in-the-80s-Patsy with her bangs-reaching-for-the-moon. Patsy was the college receptionist and had lathered so much gel in her snare wire hair that it looked crunchy. Everybody calls her Skull Face ’cause you can already tell what her skull looks like. Plus she’s queen of the camel toes, a yeast infection waiting to happen, so touch my bum already!
“Whatcha here for, Kev?” Patsy asked. Her sweater was smeared with cat hair. I tried not to look so hung over by running my fingers through my hair and smiled. “Application for the Teacher Education Program.”
“Sha right!”
I couldn’t stop staring at her lemming teeth. “Seriously.”
“You want to be a teacher?”
It hit me I hadn’t shaved. Good thing I’m gorgeous. “I want to be a teacher.”
“How old are you?”
“18.”
“You, Kevin Garner, want to teach our kids?”
I massaged my temples with my thumbs. “Can you be funny later and just give me the application forms?”
“Your truck’s still parked outside the Terminal and you’re here registering for the TEP Program?”
Ah, I thought, every Welfare Wednesday for the rest of your forgettable life, you’re gonna be line dancing to the same tunes at the Legion while I’m down south teaching. I remember when Black Fonzy dedicated Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad by Meatloaf to you on the Saturday Night Request Show and how I laughed my ass off at the both of you. That’s all you’re ever gonna get outta life: two out of three in everything.
“You’re gonna have to cut your hair, you know,” she said as she went to get the application. Sure enough there were her camel toes. I was like, “Hello, left camel toe. Hello, right camel toe. There you are. There you are.” You could even see them from behind when she bent over. I was like, “Hello, left bumper. Hello right bumper. There you are. There you are.” Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Mister Chang, the richest man in town. Chinese. He was holding an invoice in his hand. While everybody else in town owed Mister Chang money, I was one of the proud few who didn’t. My overhead’s low so I got satellite. I don’t give a hang about Friends and, really, they should tape the next Survivor up here ’cause no one would make it, no one at all.
“You want to be teacher?” he asked.
“Yeah, Mister Chang,” I wiped my nose with my sleeve. “I really do.”
My auntie who abandoned me and moved to Hay River after Grandma passed made him his parka. She owed him eight hundred bucks for an overdue cable bill. No problem. She traded him the parka, and they called it even. Just like that.
“Good decision, school,” he said, “Good money. Summer’s off. Get to see the world. Help the kids.” He looked at me and studied me for a bit before he said anything more. I had sold his son a few grams and maybe he knew it. “You want a job?” he asked.
I thought about it. Me? Buddy, I got so much money I
need a brand new truck to get it to the bank—but then I thought, Wait a minute. Use this. Earn the town’s trust. Earn it. I smiled and said, “Sure.”
“Hockey game finals are tonight at eight. Everybody wants to watch. Hay River, Smith, Yellowknife and Simpson. I need someone to tape the game and broadcast it from the office. You do this and you get into TEP I bet.”
Mister Chang was right. Not only was I Dogrib, he knew with my past I’d never get into the Teacher Education Program. I figured if people found out I did all the videotaping tonight and co-ordinated showing the hockey game over the satellite station, surely someone at Aurora College—and Lona—and Tower—and Sandy—and that pig Morris would all see I was trying to change my ways.
“So when’s the next bash at your trailer?” Patsy asked and I know she did this on purpose to embarrass me.
“Never again,” I said proudly. “I’m finished.”
“Wah!” she said. “Get out of here.”
I looked at Mister Chang who smiled and gave me the coolest nod ever. “Let’s go get the equipment.”
I got the camcorder from the Cable TV studio, got a quick how-to, but I already knew how. I had taped and broadcast the talent show for the past three years, so it was no prob. The only thing is he uses VHS tapes because he’s cheap. I had helped Mister Chang hook up the video feed the summer before at the college so the students there could have video-conferencing with other students and instructors across Canada and the north, so he knew I was good to go. I stumbled past my parked truck (where are my keys?) outside the Terminal, and ran all the way home before running to school to start tutoring. No snow yet this year. Skidooers are mad. Everyone’s got new machines, but no snow to drive on.
Mister Chang gave me twenty bucks for new videotapes but I pocketed it. That twenty covered my application fee for housing. I figured I could record over some tapes from my trailer. I dialed my answering machine from the station and hit my password: 6969. Five messages. Better not be five scores waiting to happen. Sat down. Gathered my vitamins out of my packsack. Pressed play as I gathered my Excaliburs: two saw-blades wrapped with electrical tape. Those were my buddies: red, hot right away.
“Kev, Jazz here. How’s your elbow? Doctor says for 3,500 he’ll look at it. This Sunday at the Chinese Smorg. Ciao, bro. Don’t spank it too hard or you’ll get a purple head!—click!—”
Damn. I wrote this down. I told him not to use the phone lines. I told them to use the Saturday Night Request Show tonight. Send out a request to me. I get back to you from the pay phone downtown. An elbow equals a pound. Thirty five hundred for the quality I got. Why not? There’s my tuition and then some. Do they really have a Badger on my line?
I popped 1,000 mgs of Vitamin C, 800 I.U.’s of Vitamin E, 250 mgs of Vitamin B12, 1,000 mgs of Imperial Dragon Korean Red Ginseng and two Kyolic Garlics. Guzzled it all down with my last cold Canadian.
Next message.
“Kev, Larry here. What are you burning? Three spot a G-spot or what? Gimme call, you—click!—”
I shook my head. Translation from Larry’s Raven Talk: Can you please lend me three dollars so I can take you out for coffee, but I won’t have to pay you back because, after all, I took you out for coffee.”
Big burp. One last blast with the Excaliburs. No. Not in here. Not in the station. Oh hell. Truly, hot knifing’s where it’s at: quick, efficient, no smoke wasted. This would be my thirty-third hot knife off the same gram. Right arm, right arm. Doesn’t ninety percent of digestion take place in the mouth?
I’ve been stoned since I was sixteen. Back then it was like get stoned, see what happens. Now it’s like make money off people getting stoned and making things happen. I’m paying for it though. How are my fingers? I have started to notice lately that I feel like I’m missing digits. I believe the end plates of my nerves are rusting with THC, and plus my left eye clicks whenever I roll it backwards. The enzymes in my blood that fuel my dreams are working overtime, and my arms fall asleep quicker than normal. When they tingle, does that mean they’re dreaming? The dope’s finally starting to catch up with me. I noticed a long time ago that those who start smoking up during their growth spurt develop retarded. They can’t do small things with their fingers as they get older. They get lazy, lack hope. I started hooting after growing six foot even so I’m okay—or I was. Now I get deja vus all the time and I’m starting to dream: not DREAM dream, but DREAM like the elders. Spooky.
Next message. Lona? Pleeaaassssse….
“Kev, this is Tower. Listen, it’s a good day for a ride. We need to talk—“
Fast forward. Sorry, boss. Next. Beep. Lona? Nothing. Then—
“Kevin. This is Constable Morris Spencer here. Just wanted to see if you thought any more of our talk. You can call me here at the detachment. Talk to you soon.—click—!”
Bastard. Good thing no one was here. They’d think I was turning Narc. It was this goddamn cop that was making me change my ways. Morris took me to the cop shop, poured me a coffee I couldn’t taste and told me that this was just a talk between Skins (Yeah, right, pig!). Then the bastard took out the infamous Black Book that the cops keep denying they have.
“Kevin,” he said, “you know what this is and your name’s in it. You’re a young man; you don’t have a record. We know you’re moving a lot of dope for Tower. This is your only warning. I want you to get out of the racket, Kev. Think about it. If there’s something you’d rather be doing, you better start doing it now.”
“Can I go now?” I asked. What else could I do?
“Can you go now?” He took off his glasses, pressed his fingers into the side pockets of his tired eyes and had a look at what had oozed there all day before wiping it on his pants. “Do you know what a Badger is, Kevin? It’s a neat little computer program we have. It shows who Tower calls and he calls you a lot, doesn’t he? It shows who you call. It just grows and grows. We find out a whole network every time you make a call or someone calls you. Neat, eh? It looks like a spider web, and when we show it to a Justice of the Peace, it makes obtaining a search warrant a simple process, especially in this town. We’ve already looked into your bank account, Kevin. The last time we looked you had four grand in your account. Now where did you get all that money from? Yeah, I guess you can go now.”
About a small thousand heart attacks later, I croaked, “Good.”
No calls from Lona. I get ass cramps just thinking about her.
The Fort Simmer Journal did this article on her and talked about how a modeling agency flew her to Edmonton and took her pictures and have already started lining up deals for her. The town calls her “the little Shania Twain” because she’s only 5’6”, but what a body. A total knockout. I can’t believe she hasn’t seen through Dean yet, and I kept hinting about that when we talked at the party. The hell with Dean. Is it just wishful thinking or are they drifting? She’s always eyeing me up at the bush parties. Cousin or no, what can Dean give her? That yellow-toothed loser. He lives on top of the bar for Christ sakes.
I don’t give a hang if he knows Lona and I were together and talked well past midnight, before I scared her away.
Man, what a one-nipple town. I watch the monitor. It’s just about half-time.
I can’t believe what Black Fonzy said back at the rink.
The Fort Simmer Spruce Kings ran like crippled trees from their dressing room. Their jerseys are white and black. The team was hung over. You could smell it. Wanna whiff? Think of snails in the same shoebox for a month; now multiply that stink by 69. There you go.
When the Spruce Kings got to the ice, they kicked off their skate guards and pushed themselves away. Black Fonzy. He chopped past me on his skates.
“Yo, Kev, Tower’s been lookin’ for you.”
I changed the battery for the camera. “Tower? Yeah yeah.
We met.”
“You met? He was just here.”
&nb
sp; What a burn-out. “Yeah, we met.”
“Oh.” He looked around. “Think you can score me anymore of that Jamaican finger hash?”
Fonzy was centre for Simmer. Players call him The Fist of God ’cause if he checks you, you’ll come to about a hundred feet up looking down on your own body. They say it’s a lesson from Jesus.
“Naw, man. I quit.”
Fonzy’s nose bull’s-eyed his dopey face. “You’re turning Narc on us, or what?”
“I want to get into the TEP program.”
“That’s funny.” He laughed. “You teach? I heard Tower’s got some chocolate-covered shrooms. Why don’t you score us some and I’ll split it. I got fifty.”
“I’m serious, man. I quit.”
“Gonna join the robots, huh? What about your weights
and torch?”
“You can have ’em for eighty.”
“Fifty.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Sixty.”
I give him the nod. “Done.”
“What about the trailer that cold-hard-hash made?”
“Sellin’ it,” I told him.
“I can’t see this happening,” he said and skated away.
“Sheep,” I whispered.
That was when a grunge casualty shuffled up to me, looking this way, that way.
“Mister Garner?”
Some kid. I couldn’t remember his name. His hair was so slick it looked like he combed bear grease into his mop. Behind him, a Mongolian horde of snow boarders and shithead skaters posed strong.
“Can you sell me a bag?” he asked.
“A bag of what,” I looked around. “Chips? How old are you?”
“We got cash.”
I was in shock. He was in Sandy’s class. “Get out of here,” I said. “Go.”
He blushed, shrugged, shambled off back towards the stands and spat.
The Moon of Letting Go Page 7