“Oh!” said Mona, surprised. She leveled a look at me. “You stayin’ out there?”
“For a couple of months. While I work on my second novel.”
“Are you a writer?” This was the response I’d wanted, but the source was Little Bernie.
“I try,” I answered anyway.
“I’m thinking about writing a book,” Little Bernie announced. “Sort of a book about food, written from the stomach’s point of view. You figure something like that would sell?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d have a chapter called ‘Steak: Cook It or Lose It.’ Like the jerk is always ordering his steak rare! What does he think I’m doing, building a fucking cow down here?”
“Well …”
“Hey, jerk, what was that stuff you had one time?”
“You mean steak tartare?” Big Bernie supplied.
“Yeah! Now this was a pleasant fucking surprise! Raw fucking meat! Up the spout with that doo-doo!”
“Give it a rest, Little Bern,” said Mona. She turned back to me. “So how long you been out there?”
“Just got in last night.”
Mona nodded and reached into her shorts pockets for a pack of cigarettes. She smoked a brand popularly believed to be a favorite among truckdrivers and shipyard workers, although I suspect that even they won’t touch them. Once she had the cigarette going she nodded again, vaguely this time, and said, “That must be pretty inneresting.”
“Living at Harvey’s?”
“Bein’ a writer. What do you write? Articles for magazines or sumpin’?”
“Novels.”
“Biographies,” said Mona. “That’s what I read. And I don’t much care who they’re about, neither, could be Harry S. Truman or Marilyn Monroe or some bugger in ancient Rome, Nero or somebody.”
“Why do you like biographies so much?”
Mona shrugged. “How should I know? Why do I like annathin’? I dint ever think about it.”
“Mona?” This was from the girl of the young couple. She and her mate hadn’t been listening to us. They’d kept their foreheads touching while they conversed in warm, lush whispers. “Can we have a couple more?”
“Sure.” Mona went to prepare their drinks.
Now the boy spoke to me. “We’re Kim.”
“Come again?”
The girl came again. “We’re Kim. We’re both named Kim. Pretty funny, eh?”
“It’s a fucking laff riot,” muttered Little Bernie.
“Nice to meet you, Kim,” I said, and they nodded and went back to their private world.
Jonathon began to act strangely. He put his long fingers to his temples and pressed very firmly, as if he was afraid that his head might blow apart. Jonathon said, “Oh-oh,” and everyone else in the bar said “Oh-oh” too. And then he collapsed to the floor with a loud “boom.”
I was pretty sure he was having an epileptic fit, so I frantically began to search through my pockets for something to ram in his mouth. The other people, Mona, the Kims and the Bernies, remained calm. Mona leaned across the bar so that she could peer at Jonathon; then, satisfied that he’d done himself no injury with the tumble, she went about her business. Mona remarked to Bernie, “Looks like a pretty big one.”
Bernie nodded and said, “Encore ein martoony, Moaner.”
“Shouldn’t we put something in his mouth so that he doesn’t bite his tongue off?” I almost shouted. My pockets had yielded nothing but a few crumpled dollar bills. I picked up an ashtray from the bar, but it was full of butts and anyway seemed much too large for Jonathon’s mouth.
“He’ll be all right,” said Little Bernie.
Big Bernie agreed. “Sure. But it looks like a pretty big one.”
“Big what?” I demanded, but then Jonathon’s lids popped open and his eyes, strangely colored and moist, began to roll around in his head. “Sheesh,” said Jonathon, and he struggled to his feet.
Mona had poured a shotglass full of whiskey, and Jonathon’s first act was to shoot it back. During the brief “attack” Jonathon had perspired heavily, and I saw with alarm that tears were streaming down his wrinkled face. “That was a big one,” he confirmed. Jonathon lit a cigarette with trembling hands, and after a few drags he was calmer. He wiped tears from his face and gestured for another drink. Then Jonathon turned and looked at me in a way that I’ve never been looked at before. His cats’ eyes seemed like knots in wood, dead and full of circles. “You, sir,” said Jonathon, “are an asshole.”
“Well, I’m sorry!” I said indignantly. I had to admit that my search for something to place in the Indian’s mouth was a little foolish, but accusing me of being an asshole was, I thought, a bit much. “I was afraid you’d bite your tongue off.”
“What?” said Jonathon, puzzled.
“I wasn’t going to stick the ashtray in your mouth,” I added.
Jonathon turned to Mona. “What’s he talking about?”
Mona explained, after which Jonathon said to me, “I’m touched by your concern.”
“Well then, what did you call me an asshole for?”
“Because that is what you are,” explained Jonathon. “Please don’t take it personally.”
“How else am I supposed to take it?”
Jonathon shrugged, tapped a long ash off his cigarette artfully. “There are worse things than being an asshole.”
“Like what?”
Jonathon shrugged once more, not in a manner to suggest he didn’t know, more that he was unwilling to say.
“Well,” said Little Bernie, “Big Bernie’s a jerk.”
“Yeah!” said Big Bernie. “I’m a jerko! That’s at least just as bad.”
“And me,” said Mona. “I’m sort of a, you know, slut.”
“There!” said Jonathon. “Everyone is something. Bernard’s a jerk, Mona’s a slut, and me, I’m a drunken fool. Not to mention old and ugly and gay as all get-out.”
“How about you guys, Kim?” I asked, saying their shared name rather snidely.
They answered, almost in unison, “We’re in love.”
“Then you guys are in the worst shape of anybody,” I commented.
Jonathon tapped my shoulder. “You see? That was the sort of thing an asshole would say.”
Jonathon’s remark calmed me, somehow. I took a long sip of the rancid beer and looked around The Willing Mind. “Hope,” I said, more to myself than anybody else, “is one crazy fucking place.”
“Feeling better now?” asked Jonathon, gingerly laying his long brown fingers (stained yellow here and there with nicotine) on my arm.
“Just once,” I said, staring into my ale, “just once I wish people would let me in on some of the shit going on around here.”
“Like what, for instance?” asked Jonathon.
“Well, for starters, I haven’t been to a lot of bars where the guy next to me goes ‘Oh-oh,’ keels over, then climbs back up and calls me an asshole.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy enough to explain,” said Jonathon. “I had a Vision.”
“Sure, why not.”
“He has a lot of them,” Mona put in. “He doesn’t always drop, though, only when it’s a big one.”
“Sometimes,” said Big Bernie, “Jon-Jon just goes like, ‘Whoa!’ and has to have a couple more scootches.”
“But one time,” recounted Little Bernie, “the Mystic One threw himself right out that window over there.”
“That was, I presume, a big Vision?”
Jonathon nodded. “The biggest.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said to the Indian. “You have these Visions. And in the Vision you just had, you saw that I was an asshole. Is that about right?”
Jonathon nodded. “It was very strange. I saw this face, painted to look happy, painted with a big red smile and big eyes like a child’s. But the only thing happy about the face was the paint, because the real mouth was sad, and the real eyes were crying. And I saw you. It was because of you the face was cr
ying. You could have stopped the crying, but you didn’t. Then you were gone, and a voice said, ‘Asshole.’ And mind you, the voice sounded like it knew what it was talking about. Then I was awake.”
I looked at the inhabitants of The Willing Mind. “Doesn’t that sound like one dumb Vision?”
Everyone shrugged, even Little Bernie, the enormous belly jerking up and down.
“Nice meeting all of you,” I said. “Now I’m going after Ol’ Mossback.” I threw two dollars at Mona and left the bar. And as I walked out the door, someone said (probably one of the Bernies), “Keep your dick in your pants!”
Visions
Hope, Ontario, 1983
Wherein our Young Biographer pursues the Art of the Angle, and later has a disturbing Vision of his Own.
Gregory Opdycke’s book Fishing for Ol’ Mossback has this to say:
It behooves me at this time to dispel the spurious “myths” concerning Mossback and his “predilication” for leaping out of the Lake in order to bite various “body parts” from unwitting anglers. Although this “myth” may well have its origins in some bit of “history”, the local admonition of “Keep your trouser stays fastened!” is little more than good-natured “frippery”.
Rest assured, however, that Mossback is most “acrobatic”. I recall once fishing from a “dinghy” in the Lookout, enjoining the company of three “stirpicults”, among them Ashley Hope. Ashley (using as “bait” a live “field-mouse”) took a colossal “pickerelle”.
It was a glorious struggle (the species’ reputation for “lethargy” notwithstanding) but after many a long moment, Ashley managed to lift the fish from the water. The “pickerelle” was levitated to a height of three or four “feet”, prepatory to dropping it into the vessel, at which moment Mossback struck, emerging from the lake, rising fully into the air, and tearing the fish from the “line”. All that young Ashley had to show for his “day’s work” was a largish head, the body bitten off cleanly below the operculum.
I was reading this out at Lookout Lake. The book Fishing for Ol’ Mossback was first published, at the author’s own expense, in the year 1902. (Mine was a reprinting done in 1966, although I didn’t see why anyone bothered. Surprisingly, my edition was published by a reputable, and scholarly, house.) I suppose the book’s antiquity accounts for the rather free-style use of inverted commas and the stilted syntactical constructions. Certain things struck me as more idiosyncratic, such as the use of that word “stirpicult,” which I had never encountered before, and seemed a most unlikely synonym for “fisherman.” Mostly I wondered about using a live mouse for bait. (Actually, mostly I brooded over the Indian’s Vision.)
Lookout Lake, by the way, was hardly what I’d expected. I’d expected, and longed for, an awesome God-wrought spectacle, alive and colorful and magnificent, something that would make whole my heart, dry the tears that I hadn’t the courage to shed. Instead I found a tiny, mucky thing, surrounded by desolate terrain of outcroppings. I realized that the lake wasn’t called “Lookout” because of any splendiferous view, it was called “Look out!” because rocks kept dropping out of the sky. The only thing I found soothing about it was the loneliness. No one lived beside Lookout Lake as far as I could tell; there was one cabin by the water’s edge, but it was long-abandoned and ravaged by the wilderness.
Beside me I had my fishing gear and a bottle of Harvey Benson’s whiskey. I sat on a rock, drinking and leafing through my little book. Soon, I thought, I’ll do me some serious fishing.
The most amusing of the “myths” concerning Mossback is the one profferred by the aboriginal community whereby the Fish is granted through some “Power” the faculty of human “speech”. Jonathon Whitecrow, for example, despite his impressive talents and “intelligence” (all the more impressive for his being an “Indian”) is constantly claiming to have engaged Mossback in “conversation”. We have often baited the old man, and I recorded one such encounter. This took place some years ago. Present are the author, Lemuel and Samuel McDiarmid, and Isaiah Hope. We met Whitecrow at The Willing Mind, where we four had gone after a luckless “expedition”. It behooves me to state that the McDiarmid twins and myself were slightly “intoxicated”, while Isaiah Hope, as was his wont, was well into his “cups”. Jonathon Whitecrow seemed sober enough, although this seems unlikely in retrospect, given his “heritage”.
Lem McDiarmid: How, Whitecrow.
Jonathon Whitecrow: How?
Sam McDiarmid: How!
Isaiah Hope: I believe they mean “hullo”, Jonathon.
Whitecrow: Oh! Hullo, boys.
Lem: Talked to Ol’ Mossback lately, Whitecrow?
Whitecrow: Why, um, yes. Just the other day as a matter of fact.
Sam: What did he say?
Whitecrow: He said that he doesn’t like fieldmice, and that they are especially unappetizing when someone has stuck a hook through them.
Lem: Oh, yeah? What would he have us use for bait then?
Whitecrow: He would prefer it if you used guile, respect and a fullness of heart.
Isaiah: Far simpler just to stick a hook in some poor mouse, Jonathon.
Gregory Opdycke: I take it, then, that Mossback intends not to be taken?
Whitecrow: This is true. But he doesn’t want you boys to stop trying. He thinks life would become rather boring.
Lem: What else do you talk about —
Sam: When you and Mossback talk?
Whitecrow: Just everyday things. How his children are.
Opdycke: He has children?
Whitecrow: Oh, yes. Many.
Isaiah: Does he ever mention my father?
Whitecrow: Often.
Lem & Sam: Does he say that Joe Hope was a man of good taste?
(At this point Isaiah and the McDiarmid twins exchanged verbal insults too “ribald” to recount. They went outside The Willing Mind and had blows. Isaiah, small and besotten, came out “the worse for it”. I remained behind and chatted with Whitecrow.)
Opdycke: Does it not strike you as odd, Whitecrow, that a fish should be able to talk?
Whitecrow: Why, yes! Very odd.
Opdycke: Is Mossback, in your opinion, wise?
Whitecrow: Yes, very wise. Mind you, he is a fish. He has a rather limited perspective on things. He likes to tell me, for example, what the water’s like. Too hot or too cold. He tells me how much he hates it when people piss into the lake.
Opdycke: Next time you talk to him, tell him that Opdycke means to see him stuffed and mounted!
Whitecrow: I will. Shouldn’t you go carry Isaiah home?
Opdycke: I suppose.
Soon I had finished all the whiskey and was so drunk that I thought I was sober. “Time to go fishing,” I announced. It took me many long moments to affix my Hoper to the line. Then I stood up and wobbled up to the water. I actually stood up twice, having fallen on to my butt on the first attempt. “Hey, Moss-back!!” I screamed. “Here come sumpin’ good! Dig your toothies into this, boy!”
I raised the rod and cast. It was a fine cast, and I watched with delight as the Hoper sailed high over the water, flying out far and softly disturbing the stillness of Lookout Lake. I began to reel in, and noticed a certain lack of resistance. Then I saw the end of my line lying a few feet in front of me, the knot unravelled.
“Fuggit,” said I.
I decided to go home and telephone Elspeth. It’s a good thing I’m sober, I told myself, or else she would never talk to me. I threw my stuff into the moped’s carrying bags and climbed aboard. For a few feet I managed a peculiar serpentine motion, and then the moped and I keeled over sideways on to the gravel road. It’s a good thing I’m blasted, I told myself, or else that would really hurt! I tried again, and soon I was on my way. The sun was setting, and night had covered the earth by the time I reached the homestead.
The big problem here was to keep my speech clear, evenly modulated and well-elocuted. Elspeth had an uncanny knack for picking out even the tiniest drunken irregularities. What
I needed was a crisp, earnest conversational style. I spent about half an hour practicing. “Elspeth? How are you? I’m fine. Listen, I’ve been doing some thinking and soul-searching out here …” I was drinking a bottle of beer as I practiced and noticed that this was making the inside of my mouth feel a bit fuzzy. So just before I dialed the telephone, I had a short pull on a bottle of tequila.
The phone rang endlessly, but I knew that she was home. I had a deeply disturbing vision of Elspeth in the sack with some clod, nakedly listening to the phone ring. “Don’t worry about it,” she was saying, massaging this jerk’s chest. “It’s just my goddam husb …”
She picked up the phone, said, “Hello?”
“Elspeth,” I said.
“You’re drunk.”
“All I said was ‘Elspeth’!”
“I can always tell.”
“I’m not drunk. I been fishing. Fishing for Ol’ Mossback, that’s what. Mythical fish of the golden tongue!”
“Listen, I don’t want to talk to you now.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“What difference does that make? You don’t want to talk to me when I’m sober!”
“And when is this that you’re sober?”
“I’m sober a lot of the time!”
“I guess I never noticed because I’ve got a class from nine to ten o’clock in the morning.”
“Hardy-har-har.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Don’t.”
“There’s someone here.”
A definite low blow. “Who you got?”
“June.”
For various reasons, this was sickening news. I gave Elspeth my phone number, told her to call me when I was sober. I hung up the telephone.
It was about ten o’clock in the evening. I was pleased that I’d already done all my important stuff for the day, because now I could fart around for a couple of hours.
Harvey Benson was, among other things, a music lover. One corner of the living-dining area was occupied by a strange futuristic turntable, surrounded on either side by stacks of albums. Taking the bottle of tequila along for company, I went and searched through these records. I could find nothing to suit my mood. (A record called “Tunes for Shriveling Hearts and Souls” would sell well, I reflected.) Still, I wanted music, so I finally elected to play the album already on the turntable, whatever it was. I put on the needle and went to gaze at the night through the picture window.
The Life of Hope Page 4