To Me You Seem Giant

by Greg Rhyno

  When I open the door to my bedroom, there are two red milk crates full of records in the middle of the floor. Sam Cooke. Joni Mitchell. Patti Smith. Van Morrison. Soda’s records. His mom’s records. Why was he leaving them here? That’s when the phone starts ringing.

  “Can you get that?” my mom hollers. “My hands are full of chicken guts.”

  Still staring at the records, I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Pete?” It’s Rita.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. Listen. Do you know where Soda is?”

  “Right now? No idea. Apparently, he was at my house this afternoon. He left a bunch of records here.”

  “Well, here’s the thing.” I know already that whatever Rita’s about to tell me isn’t good news. “I called Soda’s house a bunch of times yesterday about recording. Finally, his dad answered—that guy’s a piece of work. He said that Soda—and I quote—‘fucked off somewheres.’ He said his furniture’s still there, but all of Soda’s stuff is gone.”

  I can’t take my eyes off those records. “Did he know where Soda went?”

  “I asked him, but he just rattled off a bunch of bullshit about Soda being a ‘goddamn freeloader.’ I think he was kind of drunk.”

  “Sounds like Mauri.”

  “There’s one other thing.” Again, I get that bad feeling. “I didn’t think of it until just a few minutes ago. It’s kind of why I called. I saw Andy Thaler eating lunch at the pub during exams. We talked about Matty for a bit, and then he said something weird. He talked about the Bunsen Honeydew tour. In the present tense. Like it was still happening.”

  “So ... what are you saying?”

  “Well, it’s the end of the month. Most of the university students have left town.”

  “And ... ?”

  “And ... I think maybe Soda went with them.”

  SIDE B

  Let It Die

  “Guess who’s coming to town?” Ruth says as she bursts into History Storage.

  I put down my green pen next to a pile of shockingly terrible essays on Ancient Egypt and sigh.

  “Shouldn’t you be bumming out grade elevens with some kind of dystopian literature right now?” I ask her blearily. “Nineteen Eighty-Four? The Handmaid’s Tale? Barney’s Version?”

  She stares at me, one eyebrow cocked.

  “Okay. Who’s coming to town?”

  “I was just in the library when I saw this. Thought you might like to give it a read.” She slams down the Entertainment section of today’s Chronicle-Journal on top of “Ra: Sun God, or just the Sun?”

  I see his picture before I actually read the headline. He looks pretty much the same. His hair’s a little shorter, and his clothes look more expensive, but expensive in a way that’s not supposed to look expensive. Expensive like the second-hand “vintage” Guns N’ Roses t-shirts you can find in Kensington Market for thirty bucks a pop. I wonder if he has a stylist or something now.

  “It says he’s playing at Matty’s fundraiser. Our show. We’re opening for Jesse fucking Maracle.”

  I can’t tell if she’s excited happy or excited angry.

  “Hometown Hero Returns to His Roots,” I read. “They’ve got the hype machine rolling early for this one. Bet a lot of people show up.”

  “How can you be so blasé about this? It’s been ten years!”

  “You’re right,” I tell her. “It’s been ten years. I guess I’m just kind of over it.”

  Ruth shakes her head and leaves me alone with the newspaper. The truth is, I’m not over shit. The only reason I seem “blasé” about anything is because Tim Puurula, investigative reporter extraordinaire, called me up a couple days ago, wanting to know if he could ask me a few questions about Jesse Maracle. You know, to promote the fundraiser. I didn’t clue in right away. I just figured Tim was digging around in Matty’s illustrious musical heritage and drumming up a little human interest.

  “Sure,” I told him. “Shoot.”

  “Okay. So, I guess, first of all, what’s it like playing with your old friend again? I mean, it’s been what? Nine? Ten years?”

  That’s when I realized something was up.

  “Sorry?”

  “I heard you guys hadn’t spoken to each other in a long time. What was it like reconnecting?”

  “Uh, I’m not totally following you, Tim.”

  “Okay—the press release we got said that Jesse was going to play a set with some of his old bandmates from Thunder Bay. That’s you right? You guys played together in—what was it—Giant Killer?”

  “Honestly, this is the first I’ve heard about it.”

  There was a pause on the other end and a rustling of papers.

  “You sure?” he asked finally. “I understand if you guys want to keep it a surprise or something. Let me read you the email from Jesse’s publicist—”

  “Tim. It’s not us. Maybe try calling Andy Thaler.”

  More rustling.

  “I’m sorry, Pete. I just assumed—shit. I’m sorry.”

  When my parents retired last year, they bought a place out on Lakeshore Drive so they could be on the water. Now, at least once every couple weeks, my dad shows up with two or three cardboard boxes filled with old notebooks, photographs, and Star Wars figurines. All the stuff that I thought was too important to throw out, but not important enough to store myself.

  This week, with a sort of eerie synchronicity, my dad dropped off some of my own musical history. Inside an unassuming Pizza Pop box (Pepperoni and Bacon—a classic) I found a treasure trove of old cassette tapes. And, inside an empty tape case, a chunk of old hash.

  A few of the tapes were survivors of garage sales—I always tried to unload them so I could buy CDs—but a lot were just blank tapes in various degrees of blankness.

  Some were gifts from people I barely remembered, filled with song compilations of bands I also barely remembered. Some were named, with titles referencing inside jokes I didn’t get anymore, like Look a Talking Cow, That Person Called You, or Songs About Aubergine. Some had cover art clipped from ancient National Geographics and Family Livings that were, by the 1990s, ripe with irony. Ponderous monkeys. Beehived ladies serving Jell-o moulds. A Sony ad that read This could be the tape deck you leave your great-grandson. When you’re eighteen, the idea of being out of date is hilarious.

  One particular prize was a copy of the four-track tape Giant Killer recorded the summer after we won that battle of the bands. A lo-fi piece of shit that sounded like Soda’s singing in one room, while his guitar and the rest of the band were squished into another. We called it We Are the Champions. It’s terrible. I could probably sell it for a fortune.

  Another find was a compilation I made myself, but apparently never finished. On the cover there’s a picture of the Sleeping Giant in flames and a title written in my seventeen-year-old scrawl: To Me You Seem Giant. The track listing from Side A is actually pretty decent. There’s a lot of good Canadian stuff: The Hip, Hayden, Thrush Hermit—but it looks like I only finished the one side.

  Last but not least were the mystery tapes: no track listing, no hint of their content, save make and model names. Acme C 60: Normal Bias. BASF: Ferro Extra. TDK SA 60: High Bias. Memorex dBS I. On these were our first recordings—some of them were made even before Deacon was in the band. Loud, distorted attempts at covers, snatches of chatter, song ideas, and a lot of false starts. I stayed up all night and listened to all of it.

  After lunch, I walk past Vicky on my way to class. She’s cut her hair, so it’s all short and choppy, and while I’m not usually such a big fan of that style, I have to admit that she’s pulling it off. I feel the sad double twinge of lust and regret as I imagine what it would feel like to run my hands through that hair. According to the staff rumour mill, she spent a dirty Easter weekend with Danny Pound in Duluth. I guess she had moved from prebound to rebound, and now, having survived the traditional post-breakup haircut with her good looks in tact, the world was her oyster.

  I conjur
e my most collegial smile and wave. She waves back. Lately, she’s been a little more civil. Definitely not flirty, but a lot less awkward than that frightened-deer stuff she was pulling last month.

  “Hey,” she says and stops me. “I think you left something. In my car.” She says the “in my car” part quietly, like being in her car was, in and of itself, a clandestine act. I guess, for us, it usually was.

  She produces a Feist CD out of her bag. I forgot I had brought it along one day when I felt like Chad Kroeger’s presence was starting to affect my performance.

  “Thanks.”

  “I listened to it a lot. It’s good. I really like her voice.”

  “Well, uh, do you want to keep it?” I hold out the plastic square like an olive branch.

  “Actually,” she smiles, “I bought my own copy. But thanks. I better run. I’ll see you.”

  “See you,” I say to the back of her head. But I knew I wouldn’t see her. Not very much, anyway. And that was okay.

  In Ancient Civ, Jonathan Heyen-Miller is present, but his seating partner, Alexandra Carter, is not.

  “Noticed you weren’t in class yesterday,” I tell him.

  His eyes are locked on a copy of Franny and Zooey and he doesn’t bother to look up. “Dentist appointment.”

  “Do you have a note from home?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow.” He turns a page and laughs quietly to himself about something he’s just read.

  “Have you seen Alex lately?”

  He looks up and eyes me irritably. “I have no idea where Alex is. It’s not like she’s my girlfriend or anything.”

  As he goes back to Salinger, I scan his face for things he shouldn’t know.

  For the first week after her arrival, Alex acted like she invented the whole concept of being a student. She took notes, she asked questions in class, she even aced a tricky quiz on Aztec architecture. I guess she was trying to prove something. After a while though, she started skipping classes. A couple Fridays at first, but it’s Thursday now, and I still haven’t seen her all this week. I guess old habits die hard. For what it’s worth, I did due diligence and sent an email to Murdock. I hadn’t heard back from him.

  At three thirty, Ruth and I belly up to the long cafeteria tables like we’re going to play cards and eat sloppy joes. I always hope there’ll be coffee at staff meetings, but nine times out of ten, they just have those little plastic juice cups with the peel-off tops we used to get from school lunch programs. It’s during these meetings I realize how little time I spent in this place when I was a student. It was always the domain of the Pussies and the loud, skinny girls who competed for their attention. Up at the front of the room, Wayne Trimble taps on a microphone.

  “All right, folks, I’d like to get started so we can all get home ...”

  Teachers make the worst students. I look around the room and watch seventy or so staff members lean on their hands, check their cell phones, and chat indifferently with their neighbours.

  As Trimble’s second-in-command, Murdock sits near the front and wills everyone into silence. The head secretary sits beside him and cracks her knuckles. Eventually, when there’s a quorum of listeners, Trimble begins to speak. He runs through some basic housekeeping—reminders about what to do if you lose your key, reminders about locker clean-outs, and exam procedures.

  “I want to know exactly what part of this meeting couldn’t be sent in an email,” Ruth says, a little too loudly. She looks at her watch. “Shit. I hope Michael remembers to feed Pepperoni.”

  Eventually, Murdock steps up to the mic and talks about a new off-campus course the school’s running next semester at Old Fort William for at-risk students.

  “So, in coordination with Old Fort employees,” Murdock explains, “the program gives kids a chance to do all this brilliant historical stuff, like work with animals on the farm, fire a cannon, build a canoe. And they get one History and one Tech credit for it.”

  Jim Lodge puts up his hand. “Do you get to dress up like one of those—what do you call them—coureurs de bois?”

  “Well, Jim, what you and Mrs. Lodge do in the privacy of your own home is up to you—” he gets a few laughs “—but the at-risk kids don’t usually like to play dress-up.”

  “Ah, forget it then!” A few more laughs.

  It would be a pretty sweet gig, and in some ways, I’m the perfect guy for the job. History’s my first teachable, and unless things change—which they probably won’t—I’ve got only two contract periods. Conceivably, I could spend my whole day out there. I wouldn’t even have to set foot in Mackenzie King all day.

  “So, if you’re interested in helping out with the program, talk to your department head. Or, better yet, just speak to me directly.”

  Murdock smiles and sits down. I realize that as long as he’s heading up this new initiative, there’s no way I’ll be teaching anything but Civics and more Civics next semester, especially now that his daughter’s about to fail my class.

  Just when we’ve reached the end, Trimble stands up and tells us there’s been a late addition to the schedule. There’s a unanimous groan, and everyone looks at the cafeteria clock under its wire cage as if they’ve all suddenly and simultaneously recognized the symbolism.

  “We don’t usually do this at meetings,” Trimble starts, “but it’s come to my attention that one of our staff members will be retiring this summer ...”

  People start twisting their necks like owls.

  “Klukie?”

  “Priddle?”

  “It’s Ellis,” Gail says.

  “Now, I know Mr. Kohler—” Trimble continues as Gail nods her head sagely “—doesn’t like a lot of attention, but I wanted to take a minute to let him know how much he’ll be missed.”

  With about as much panache as he demonstrated in his rousing lecture on textbook return protocol, Trimble biographizes the Führer like he’s reading the back of a hockey card. “Ellis Kohler was born in Germany, but lived in Canada most of his life. Before he came to work here at Mackenzie King, he worked as a cab driver and served as a lieutenant in the Canadian Armed Forces.”

  “Military background. Called it!” I hiss at Ruth.

  “He’s always been well regarded at this school as a tough but fair-minded teacher with an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject matter and—” Trimble looks up from his notes to deliver his one, practised joke “—a fondness for cardigan sweaters.” There are a few chuckles and then a brief silence as Trimble over-anticipates laughter and then struggles to find his place again. “Uh, we have a few parting gifts for you here Ellis, so why don’t you come up to the front for a moment ...”

  Kohler stands up, red-faced and smiling, and does a slow jog up the aisle. Everyone whistles and hoots as he passes.

  “Speech!” demands Doug Klukie. Several other senior teachers shout out a similar request. “Speech! Speech!”

  When he gets to the front, Trimble hands him a bottle of wine in a decorative bag and a wrapped gift. The principal gestures at the microphone and seems pleased when Kohler agrees to speak.

  “Well, I’m sure as many of you already know—partly,” he winks, “because this is a retirement speech—I have taught high school for a very long time. Indeed, during the past thirty-four years, I’ve developed what some people might call eccentricities.” He looks over his bifocals, and there are a few knowing chuckles. “People say I have only three sweaters. This is not true! I have six.” There is more laughter. He pauses again. “Yes, it is true. I have six—some of them are just the same colour.” More laughter. Middle-aged women raise their glasses to wipe happy tears from their eyes. That Ellis, they must think, such a character.

  “So. I have taught History for a long time,” he considers, “and in this time I have come to think that education is like a Type 2 commercial Volkswagen. You know this? The ‘Magic Bus’? ‘Are you going to San Francisco?’ Yes? Well, you probably also know that it was Hitler who commissioned the production of a ‘people’s car’
for his ‘master race.’ Mind you, ‘the people’ never got these cars ...”

  It’s been years since I was in Kohler’s class, but I’m starting to feel that old, dusty dread I used to feel when he’d ask everyone to take out their textbooks and follow along.

  “...and then, after Stalingrad and the Yalta Conference, once everyone was friends again, Volkswagen started exporting these ‘microbuses’ to North America. The beatniks drove them all over to their Woodstock and their Haight-Ashbury. Lo and behold, a symbol of das Dritte Reich becomes a symbol of counter-culture.”

  I sense the audience getting restless. Everyone, including myself, seems to have lost the thread of his analogy. Klukie is checking his Blackberry and Lodge is reading one of his wife’s Cosmos behind a briefcase.

  “So. It was a good machine. Good for Nazis. Good for hippies. Good for everyone in between. A testament to German engineering!”

  There are only a few polite smiles now. It must be clear, even to him, that he’s overstayed his welcome.

  “But now, I see young people driving the same microbus. Not a modern version, but the very same Type 2s their parents drove in the nineteen-sixties. I don’t know. Maybe young people are nostalgic for a time they will never know. But they drive them all the same, and because they are antiques, people criticize them when they break down. People laugh. They say, ‘Those hippie buses are no good.’ They say, ‘Those hippie buses are shit.’”

  Kohler’s speech has been so mannered and reserved that, when he lands hard on the carefully selected expletive, two things happen. First, everybody shuts up and listens to him, and second, we are suddenly privy to a previously unknown reservoir of rage.

  “Well, they are shit. They are old and they don’t work as they once did. Our education system, this Machine for the People, is old, too. Is also broken down. At one time, yes, it was good for everyone, but now, it is kaput.

  “The politicians, they will vilify you teachers to please the taxpayers—the parents of the children you teach. No matter how good your intentions, you are a two-horned devil, and your horns are called July and August.”