The truck seemed to be slowing down as it approached him. Solomon kept walking and didn’t look back. By the time it reached him, the truck must have been going at just twenty kilometres per hour or less, coming to a complete stop about ten metres up the road. What did he want? Did he need help? Solomon felt apprehension gather in him as he walked by the side of the truck. The passenger door flung open as he got close and he could hear a voice and the crackle of a two-way radio. As he reached the passenger door, he glanced inside as quickly as possible, hoping not to be noticed. He really just wanted to slink by. No such luck.
“Holy cow, it’s minus twenty-two with the wind chill, now. You’re gonna freeze your butt right off in no time!” The plump woman in a jean jacket looked down on Solomon with a big smile, then moved her chewing gum around to a more convenient location in her mouth. Her bleached blonde hair was short and dull, with only a few random spikes of gel on the top giving it some life and texture. But it was the oversized square fuchsia clip-ons covering each earlobe that caught Solomon’s attention.
Solomon smiled sheepishly and bowed his head slightly.
“It’s really not too bad, madam.” It was bad — every few minutes Solomon had to cover his ears because he could barely feel them anymore. He realized when he spoke that his facial muscles were frozen too and he felt as though he was slurring.
“Well where ya headed?” The woman’s smile remained constant.
“Oh, just a short way down the road, to a convenience store. I was told it’s a quick walk…” The woman raised her eyebrows.
“I’d say you got yourself some bad info there, buddy!” She scratched her head and turned towards the windshield, squinting. “Oh yeah. You’re lookin’ at a good two kilometres.”
Solomon didn’t remember getting in her truck, but there he was, perched higher above the road than he’d ever been, with almost a bird’s-eye view of the terrain. His glance caught a plastic toy Smurfette on the dashboard, complete with exaggerated lashes, white shoes and flowing blonde hair.
“It’s no trouble at all, bud. I was gonna get myself a pack of smokes and some ginger ale anyway. Don’t matter where I get it. We’ll check out the little corner shop together, eh?”
Solomon folded his hands in his lap and glanced over to the woman. “Thank you.”
“Sheila.” She extended her right hand, gripping the wheel with the left. Solomon really wished she would just focus on the road. He hesitated for a brief moment before shaking her hand.
“Solomon.”
Sheila’s smile filled not only her face, but seemingly the whole cabin.
“Love it! My husband’s little brother is called Solomon. Sweetest guy on earth!”
Solomon felt she was giving him an opportunity to ask a polite question.
“What does your husband do, Sheila?” It seemed appropriate to ask. She chuckled before responding.
“Oh, dear … well, Todd is mostly torturing himself about not being enough of a man.”
Solomon felt a sense of worry build in his stomach. Did he just unwittingly stroll into a minefield?
“He’s a stay-at-home dad, you see, ever since an accident made him useless in construction. He tried out working behind a desk answering calls at the local clinic, but that sure didn’t turn out to be his thing.” Sheila didn’t sound bitter and there was no edge to her tone. She was stating incontrovertible facts.
“How old are your kids?” Solomon hoped that he wasn’t prying. Again, the information she shared seemed to invite the question.
“Our son’s fifteen and let me tell you, that kid’s sweet as pie! But he needs a little extra help you know. And Todd turned out to be a grade-A caregiver. I’m gone Monday to Friday, on the road sometimes eight hundred kilometres away. But you should see him throw together a banquet each night at the kitchen table. God, he has my son under a spell whenever he’s at work in the kitchen. That kid just sits there focusing on him chopping, mixing, kneading, frying like there’s nothing else going on in the whole wide world. Oh, he just loves the rhythm of onions being diced on the wooden cutting board at my husband’s breakneck speed. Yeah, he gets a real kick out of it. Sometimes my husband slows down, just to see if the kid’s paying attention. And is he ever! He gets all pissed off and frustrated — God, it’s cute — and only calms down when my husband picks up the speed again...” Sheila wasn’t really talking to Solomon; she was describing a scene back home to herself, smiling with satisfaction, wrapped up in the image of home.
“It sounds to me that your husband is quite the man, doing a real man’s work.” Solomon glanced over to Sheila, who seemed amused.
“You’re kinda different, aren’t you?” She chuckled. “I guess you’re a priest or something?”
“Yes, something…” Solomon smiled with boyish mischief. He didn’t think he was capable of that. And if he still was, was it even a good look for him? He refocused himself. “Almost anyone with two arms and two legs can pour cement, replace a roof or carry a couch down a flight of stairs. Yes, all of that takes skill and physical strength and manpower. It’s important work; I would not doubt that for a moment…” Solomon paused and rubbed the palm of his hand. “But Todd is working day in and day out on a parallel plane, if that makes any sense. The product of his labour is not as tactile or as visible, in a physical sense, as newly installed drywall or resurfaced asphalt. It may be invisible to the naked eye, at least at first glance. But it’s there and it’s real. He’s building the Kingdom with nothing but his bare hands. In fact, I think that for your son at least, the kingdom is already here.”
Sheila didn’t respond at first, and her smile was barely visible now. But she seemed to be nodding to herself, until she turned to Solomon.
“Nice sermon, bud.”
Solomon felt self-conscious. Most people, himself included, hated preachiness, especially when laced with morally superior platitudes.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
Sheila’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “No, no! It was good. Very good!” She let out a deep, fulsome laugh, followed by a satisfied sigh. “Haven’t been to church in ages, so what can I say? I guess you brought church to me. Dammit, you’re a sneaky little one, aren’t ya now?”
***
It turned out that Sheila was spending the night at the Lanark Solstice Inn too. She explained that Wednesday night was always a special treat. Monday and Tuesday, she parked her truck in a quiet spot somewhere and slept in the vehicle. She was lucky if she found a truck stop nearby with a shower and proper facilities. Wednesday, though, she had her routine. She would check into a local motel, soak in the tub, order in some Chinese and watch sitcoms until she fell asleep on the plush queen-size bed. She woke up with a bounce in her step on Thursday and it kept her going until she got home on Friday afternoon.
When they got back to the motel, Solomon found Leclair sitting on the end of the bed in just his underwear and T-shirt staring at the television, a mere metre or two from the box. He seemed to be thoroughly wrapped up in his own world, and Solomon couldn’t tell if he was registering anything at all of what was on. Private investigator Thomas Magnum drove down the lush palm tree–lined streets of Oahu, with haughty Higgins lurking around the grand beachfront estate, trying his absolute best to keep the wayward detective on the straight and narrow, inserting that requisite dose of misery that makes life life.
Looking at the contents of his brown paper bag, Solomon had to admit that this was hardly a banquet of heavenly proportions — a bag of white bread, peanut butter, processed cheese spread in a glass jar, two apples, a carton of milk. He hadn’t had much to work with at the store.
Leclair took no notice of Solomon. He continued to stare at the television — one moment blankly, the next moment as though something he saw was going to suck him right in through the screen. That’s how Solomon found him during a laundry detergent commercial. Soiled clothing spun and spun in a machine until a pleasant little bell went off. Then a gorgeous woman with blinding
white teeth held up an immaculate white T-shirt, her face melting away in a joy so sublime that one would have thought it was none other than the Holy Mother who materialized miraculously from the soapsuds. Leclair leaned forward as though something was beckoning him. What was he seeing?
“I am sure you’re hungry by now…”
No answer.
“Do you prefer peanut butter or the cheese spread?” Solomon held up each, the peanut butter in his right hand, the cheese spread in his left. He felt like he was in the commercial now.
Leclair didn’t acknowledge him.
“Or would you like to try both? There’s nothing wrong with doing that either. Joseph?”
Leclair didn’t look directly at Solomon, but he did move his head for the first time and looked towards him. Maybe the spell was breaking. Solomon had him sit on the side of the double bed, facing the other one parallel to it. He moved the telephone and notepad to the corner of the night table and used a plastic knife from the store to spread peanut butter on one slice of bread and cheese on the other. He handed both to Leclair. Neither uttered a word. There would have been plenty to talk about, but somehow this didn’t seem like the right time. Leclair seemed deflated but calm as he bit into the piece with the peanut butter first. Solomon hunched forward in the tight space between the two beds, directly across from Leclair, opened the carton of milk and passed it over the narrow carpeted valley to the taciturn man across from him. Leclair seemed transfixed by something on the carton, something that Solomon simply could not see. Then, as if woken from this hypnosis, Leclair chugged it back.
***
Solomon, Leclair and Sheila each lay in their own rooms that night at the Lanark Solstice Inn. The winds had died down and light snow danced its way to the ground — unhurried, sauntering through the air. Sheila was in the room next to Solomon. He could hear her speaking softly on the phone — murmurs, fragments of words. She had invited him to join her for Chinese delivery in her room and told him that she really wanted to meet his friend too.
“I’m afraid he’s … shy. He can get very anxious around new people.” Sheila gave Solomon a knowing look. She didn’t press the issue further.
The cool-blue light from the motel’s sign streamed in through the crack in the curtains. Solomon had forgotten how quiet the country could be at night. Sheila had hung up the phone, the passengers in the cars that roared down the road only a few hours before had all arrived home safely and the television box sitting in each room contemplated its existence in silence.
***
They were all there; each one of them soaking blissfully in that grand pool of warm, foaming water. Steam lifted from the surface, carrying their lilting voices into the wintry forests that surrounded them. Solomon was surprisingly comfortable in the plush white bathrobe as he stood at the edge of the water, looking in. Only his feet were getting cold. A thin layer of ice on the walkway cracked under his weight.
The waters before him were emerald, lush and soft, and the bathers seemed inexplicably transfigured. It’s not that their bodies had changed as such. From a strictly physical perspective, Leclair bore deep scars. The middle-aged woman next to him had a distended abdomen that broke the surface of the water. She held a cocktail in her hand and her tan signalled to the world that she had just returned from a beach holiday. The old Mrs. Turner from weekday Mass and her sister, adorned in a homemade turban, both had puckered necks and arms. The agile lady from the antique shop looked surprisingly frail without her clothes on. Sheila’s well-worn and ill-fitting bathing suit appeared liable to burst open at a moment’s notice and her husband’s chest was covered in tattoos acquired during his youth — ones he now undoubtedly regretted. And in between these portly parents sat a boy who seemed far too fragile for his age.
The bathers all bore the unmistakable marks of an unforgiving life. There was hardly a bath in this world or the next that could ever wash away the telltale signs of suffering that transcended all languages, peoples and nations. Yet Solomon could see that this motley group had been transfigured in a real way, though it was next to impossible for him to rationalize what he was witnessing. It was something akin to people who had every reason in the world to brood, agonize, rue or mourn instead of sitting in perfect tranquility, chatting with ease, even with strangers.
Small frozen pellets with sharp edges fell from the sky, pricking Solomon’s skin. His toes were slowly going numb. Time to enter the water. Should he remove the robe? The pellets seemed to be growing in size. At first they simply fell on him, but increasingly, it felt as though they were being hurled. The pellets transformed themselves into round silver pieces, smooth on the surface, but startling and painful when they hit Solomon between his eyes.
The icy forest dissolved into dated prefabricated wood panels on four walls and there was no sign of water. As his eyes focused, Solomon could see Leclair dressed in his winter coat and toque, leaning on the dresser across from the bed, throwing quarters at him. For the first time, a grin — a demented grin — seemed painted across Leclair’s face.
“What on earth is your problem now?” Solomon picked up a quarter and hurled it back at Leclair, hitting the television screen instead. Everything about Leclair seemed exaggerated — his voice, his body language, how he ducked at the sight of the incoming coin.
“But, Father, you of all people gotta know that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, right?”
Leclair’s teasing tone suddenly gave way to genuine surprise as he inspected a quarter in the palm of his hands. “Oh, shit — they made Queen E look older again...” Leclair mumbled something as he walked over to Solomon, sitting up in the bed, thoroughly unamused. He put the coin under Solomon’s nose. Father glared.
“A penny for your thoughts?” Leclair attempted a terrible impersonation of an English accent before suddenly pulling the covers off of Solomon’s bed. He hunched over and held his stomach as he burst out in laughter — whether it was genuine or forced was unclear — at the sight of Father Solomon exposed in his underwear.
With slow, deliberate, seething movements, Father Solomon got out of bed and stood up straight, a couple of inches from Leclair. He spoke with cold articulation.
“Go grab the urn, warm up your truck and wait for me quietly in the vehicle.” Leclair seemed taken aback by the paternalistic, irritated tone. Father Solomon sounded like a school teacher scolding a bratty kid.
“Well, fuck me...” Leclair kicked the television stand.
As Leclair stormed out, he all but knocked over Sheila, who had materialized outside the door. An unlit cigarette hung limply from the side of her mouth. She took a thorough look — up and down — at the almost-naked Solomon before feigning modesty and turning her back to him.
“So your buddy here … interesting fella, eh?” Her voice trailed off as she lit her cigarette. “I helped him convince the receptionist that it was okay to give us the key to your room.” She glanced back at Solomon, who was clumsily putting on his pants, nearly tripping over himself.
“Sorry ’bout that. He said you guys were gonna be late to something important. It couldn’t wait, he said.”
Solomon nodded his head slightly and sighed as he stared aimlessly at the carpet.
“Hey, so how ’bout we have a quick breakfast?” She stopped to puff smoke in the direction of the cars on the road. “It’s free. Comes with the price of the room.”
As Sheila closed the door behind her and Leclair retreated into his truck, the room became mercifully quiet. Solomon splashed lukewarm water on his face and rubbed his eyes before deciding on a quick shower. The water spraying from the showerhead was scalding and Solomon struggled to set it to a more comfortable temperature. He unwrapped the little square of soap provided by the motel. It was as hard as a rock and its scent was faded. He still didn’t understand what he was doing here. Or more precisely, he understood perfectly well what he was being asked to do but began to question whether he was losing his mind to even go along with it. All he knew was
that this unsettled, guilt-ridden man claimed to have poisoned his neighbour, at her request no less, and needed a priest to bury her ashes and somehow offer him absolution. But could he? He had all the official lines down pat. God’s salvific mercy and forgiveness was mediated through His Church. It wasn’t so much that he was invested with special powers, but more that as Leclair’s confessor, as it were, he could serve as a real, tactile conduit of God’s healing grace. What a wretched vehicle he is, though. God’s forgiveness knows no bounds, it’s freely available to all and it defies human language and thought. Yet that intricate web of laws, traditions and revelation, at times opaque — like the steamed-up bathroom mirror in which Solomon could no longer see his own face — so effectively curtailed the infinite.
***
Breakfast at the Lanark Solstice Inn was something of a bad joke. Granola bars and sticky pre-packaged muffins — ones that never managed to go dry — lay in an unceremonious pile at the far end of the check-in counter in the lobby. Solomon decided to go with a pack of instant oatmeal, while Leclair hummed and rubbed his head through his toque.
Sheila slipped a couple of granola bars into her jean jacket as soon as the receptionist retreated into the office behind the lobby. “Well, looks like I’ve got a long drive ahead of me today…”
Solomon could feel that Sheila wanted to be asked where she was going. He pushed the clumpy oatmeal in the plastic bowl back and forth with his spoon. It could use more water.
“First stop: Cornwall. Then over to the States. Massena, Ogdensburg, Watertown. Gotta get it all in before sundown.” Sheila took a sip of her coffee through the hole in the plastic lid. “God, it’s that bridge I hate...” Both Solomon and Leclair stopped eating and had an almost identically confounded look.
I Have Demons Page 7