To Me You Seem Giant

by Greg Rhyno

  I can see Trimble, who’s been standing off to the side the entire time, take a step forward. He smiles, and his hands gesture uselessly Can we wrap this up? Kohler ignores him and soldiers on.

  “But it is you, teachers, who do the greatest damage, because it is you who perpetuate the machine. Every day you stand outnumbered in your classrooms, hamstrung by your administration, distracted by the latest teaching trend, and now, confused by this standardized, one-size-fits-all methodology that turns our students into Hitler Youth. Yet, you work and slave and adapt and spread yourself so thin until you become the grease between the wheels of this broken machine.

  “Young teachers, I beseech you. Abandon the broken machine by the side of the road. Sell it for scrap if you must. Or if you are very brave and don’t mind being very unpopular, take it apart and rebuild it. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, yes? Better and stronger. I’m sorry I cannot offer you any solutions, but as I said, I am old, and this is a retirement speech. It is not my job anymore. My job now is to sit by a lake and forget all this. Good luck and thank you for such a lovely gift.”

  “Holy crap!,” Deacon says. “He just went off like that? Der Führer?”

  “The very same,” Ruth says, unplugging her guitar from the amp.

  Pepperoni, who has been hiding upstairs in protest as we practised, materializes and rubs his face against my pant leg.

  “Man, I wish I had seen that,” Deacon continues, putting his bass back in its case. “Did he really call the education system ‘shit’?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Wow. Harsh.”

  After practice, Deacon convinces me to drink a beer and play some Grand Theft Auto. I’ve never been super into video games. I have just enough nerdy tendencies that to embrace one more might push me over the very thin line that separates charmingly available bachelor and hopelessly single man-boy.

  “You’re a terrible driver,” Deacon scolds. “You just ran over that old lady for no good reason.”

  “Is there ever a good reason for running over an old lady?”

  Ruth, like most wives and girlfriends I know, has a slow-boil hatred for inane video games. She’s wisely removed herself to read upstairs.

  “God, if that’s how you drive in real life, I hope you never get your licence.”

  I continue to navigate a battered taxi cab around the streets of Vice City until the engine catches fire. Sirens wail and despite my attempts to evade the cops on foot, they eventually beat me to death in a parking garage.

  “Remember that time you let Soda drive the Sabre and he did all those donuts in the student parking lot?”

  “Yeah. He missed hitting Jason Sebesta’s Suburban by, like, an inch. And then he slammed into the chain-link fence.”

  “You remember Fat Fuck running down the front steps screaming at us?”

  “I couldn’t drive my car to school for a month after that. I was sure he’d recognize it. I had to walk to school and it was during that cold snap.”

  All our laughter gets eaten up by silence after a few seconds.

  “It’s going to be weird seeing him again,” I say finally.

  “Yeah.”

  It’s rare for me and Deacon to talk about Soda. There’ve been so many times when the name Jesse Maracle came up in someone else’s conversation, or when we heard ‘Common Cold Heart’ playing on a stereo somewhere, and we have to look at each other and silently acknowledge this weird evidence that proves our friend left us behind. That’s usually enough.

  “Hey, so,” Deacon says, with a tone that deliberately changes the subject, “do you think Kohler’s right?”

  “About?”

  He takes the game controller from me and commandeers a motorcycle.

  “Well, Ruth’s been on about those standardized exams since the beginning of the school year. And did you read that article in the Chronicle-Journal about how much they’re costing the province?”

  “No. What is it? Few hundred grand?”

  “Shit. Hold on, I need to steal this garbage truck.” Deacon quickly murders a sanitation worker. “Try two million dollars.”

  “Two million dollars? Our department doesn’t have enough money for textbooks, and the province is shelling out two million on a bunch of exams we could write for free?”

  “Hey, can I show you something?” He drives the truck off a flight of stairs. It spirals in the air like a football, lands on its side, and skids down the pavement. The screen flashes Double Insane Stunt Bonus.

  “I get it, Deacon. You’re really good at driving imaginary trucks.”

  “No, not that.” He hits pause on the controller and pushes up to his feet. “Follow me.”

  Deacon’s office is in the basement, and it’s a mess. It’s a little drywalled room, just off the unfinished part where we practise. Two desks and two desktop computers dominate the space, but he’s also got a printer, and a scanner, and bunch of other black and grey components tied together by a bird’s nest of wires. There’s a stack of boxes in one corner with names of clients sharpied across the side. He’s got a corkboard up with a lot of notes and printouts, some with lines of text highlighted. The only attempts at decoration are a 1974 Steely Dan concert poster for their Pretzel Logic tour and a Super Friendz poster that Rita designed about ten years ago. Super Friendz with special guests Giant Killer! Aquaman’s head is a Telecaster. Ruth had them both framed as an anniversary present.

  Deacon sits down at one of his desktops and his hands are suddenly a blur between the keyboard and the mouse. I pull up a chair from the other desk and watch him go. I forget sometimes how good he is with this sort of thing, and it makes me think that maybe I should have paid more attention in grade nine Keyboarding. He leaps through a series of screens and windows and before I know it, we’re staring at something that looks oddly familiar.

  “Wait—why are we on the school board’s website?”

  “We’re not. We’re on the board’s diagnostic site. It’s kind of a place for the website administrator to test run site design.”

  “Okay, so why are we on the board’s diagnostic site?”

  “Well, because you work for the public sector, and the public sector is always a little behind the times, especially when it comes to technology.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I shouldn’t be able to access this info, but I can because the security is a joke. I mean, come on. It’s like they sealed up a bank vault with a beaded curtain.”

  “So, what? Is this illegal? Are we committing a crime right now?”

  “Nah, it’s not our fault they left the backdoor open—but this—” he cuts a string of numbers and letters from one screen and pastes it into the data field of another “—is totally illegal.”

  All of a sudden, the screen fills with an enormous list of incomprehensible file names.

  “What’s all that?”

  “These are all the files that the Lakehead School Board doesn’t want you to see. Teacher disciplinary notes, H.R. stuff, sub-contracts, all kinds of junk. Even—” he looks at me and scratches his beard “—standardized exam files.”

  Before I can say anything, he clicks on a file and a PDF of the Lakehead District School Board Grade Twelve Ancient Civilizations Exam appears on the screen. The whole course, reduced to two hundred multiple-choice questions.

  “Jesus, Deacon. Why are you showing me all this?”

  “Because I think you guys are right. You, Ruth, The Führer. Even though I never liked that guy. Did you know he only gave me a sixty-two in grade ten History?”

  “Deacon. Focus.”

  “Well, I thought about showing it to Ruth, but she’d freak because it’s illegal. She’s kind of like that.”

  “Most people are ‘like that’ when it comes to breaking the law.”

  “Look. Do whatever you want. If you want to warn the board about their lax security and win some brownie points, cool. But if you really want to throw a wrench in the gears, well, here it is.” He clicks
the mouse a couple times and his printer hums to life.

  “What would you do?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, Pete.” He gives me a copy of the test, still warm from the printer. “Just don’t complain about things when you can actually change them.”

  SIDE A

  June

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  “We can call the police, is what we can fucking do about it now.” Deacon shoves his tuning pedal into his backpack like he’s trying to punch through the bottom.

  “We’re not calling the police. Besides. It was partly his anyway.”

  “The guy stole from us, Pete. Stop trying to defend him.”

  “I’m not defending him. I’m just saying he did own a third of it.” Shortly after I found Soda’s records in my bedroom, I noticed our four-track was missing from the basement. “Maybe he was trying to pay for it with all the stuff he left.”

  “What, a bunch of mouldy records, and a cat that needed three hundred and forty-six dollars’ worth of shots? You know my mom made me pay for them myself? Otherwise, I would’ve had to take him to the Humane Society.”

  He slams the lid down on his bass case, picks it up, and slings his backpack over his shoulder. Then he looks around at our rehearsal space. With everything gone, it seems so big now.

  Deacon sighs. “Can you grab one end of my amp?”

  “Sure.”

  We lug it outside and into the back of the Sabre. Ruth is waiting behind the wheel.

  “Hey,” she says. “Sorry to hear about ... everything.”

  “How come you get driving privileges?” I ask. “When do I get to pilot this beast?”

  “Maybe when you get your licence,” she says.

  “Hey, Pete, you coming tonight?” Evie leans in from the back seat.

  “I think so. I got a few things I need to do first.”

  Martha Dumptruck are opening for Eric’s Trip at Whiskey Jack’s tonight. It’s a pretty big deal, and lots of people are supposed to be coming, so of course Ruth’s amp went on the fritz. Luckily, she could borrow Deacon’s. It’s not like he needs it right now.

  “Hey,” Evie continues, “I’m still your date for grad, right? Your friend Mike asked me, but I don’t want to go with him. He smells weird.”

  “Yep. Got you covered. And hey, if I don’t make it tonight—have a good show.”

  I watch them drive off until they make a turn and I can’t see their car anymore. I should go tonight. Normally, I’d be first in line for Eric’s Trip, but I just haven’t felt like going to shows lately.

  I looked for him. Every day for a week or so, I tried to track him down, just in case Rita was wrong. I went to his house and got barked at by Mauri. I went to the St. James Arcade, Soldier’s Hole, Whiskey Jack’s. I never saw him. I talked to Emily Gardner, Emily McCormack, Tina Reid, Clarissa Woods. All the girls he messed around with this year. No one had seen him. I even made the ball-shrivelling climb to the top of Mackenzie King just to see if he was hiding out up there. He wasn’t. Maybe if I had burned a fifty-dollar bill on the school crest, he would’ve appeared like a ghost.

  But there was one place I thought about checking out and never did.

  It takes me about half an hour to get to Banning Street, and another ten minutes or so to find the right house. Honeydew Headquarters. In the fading daylight, it looks more shabby than bohemian. The paint is worn and peeling off the brick, the front porch is slightly askew, and a ratty Canadian flag hangs with half-assed patriotism in the window. Soon some slumlord is going to hose this place out and turn it around to a bunch of second-years. I imagine that eight or nine months of dude and pot stank is about as much as anyone can really handle, so it’s a good bet that everyone’s already cleared out for the summer. That’s why I’m a little surprised when, after I give the front door a half-hearted knock, Sudbury Steve swings open the screen and flashes a purple-gummed smile.

  “So. They left you behind too,” he says.

  I half expect him to slam the door in my face. Instead, he invites me in.

  “Here, man, have a seat. You want a beer?”

  “Uh, sure.” I plop down on a stained couch. On the wall, Jimmy Page pouts at me from behind a double-necked Gibson. Steve disappears around the corner and I hear the clinking of beer bottles and the hiss of meat hitting a hot pan. Steve asks somebody a question I can’t quite make out; then I hear that somebody laughing. A minute later he reappears and puts a bottle of Canadian in front of me. He grabs a seat in the adjacent chair, an equally stained La-Z-Boy.

  “Sorry,” I say, feeling like I need to charge the air with diplomacy, “were you guys in the middle of making dinner?”

  “I’m not. Howie’s making something or other in there.” He takes a sip from his beer and leans forward. “He’s an exchange student from Hong Kong. Guy barely speaks any English and just giggles at whatever I say. Check it out ...

  “Hey, Howie!” he hollers. “What are you cooking in there? Dogmeat stew? You cooking up a little Jack Russell Terrier for dinner?” Steve lets loose with this high-pitched hyena laugh.

  Howie walks out of the kitchen smiling, with the steaming pan in his hand. He’s wearing a buttoned-down shirt tucked into crisp, new blue jeans, and I immediately feel sad that fate has dropped him into this house.

  “Pork,” he says, pointing to the pan. “You ... want?” he offers.

  “Uh, no. No, thank you,” Steve says, inspecting the pan from the chair. Then he looks in my direction and whispers, as if Howie is only capable of hearing loud noises, “That’s totally dog.”

  Howie says something in Cantonese and returns to the kitchen.

  “So, it looks like you and I’ve got a lot in common these days,” Steve says.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I take a sip of my beer.

  “I heard our friend Kim got caught screwing around with a married man, huh?” He lets out a low whistle. “She always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

  It’s weird talking about Kim with Steve, but sometimes it takes a common enemy to cement a little camaraderie.

  “Yeah. And it was my fucking art teacher.”

  “That’s right! Howlin’ Mad Murdock.” Steve pulls a lever on the recliner and I find myself staring at a hole in his sock.

  “How’d you know his name?”

  “He and his wife came to a couple of our shows. Introduced himself to the band and bought us a pitcher of beer. He kept calling me Dizzy, as in Dizzy Gillespie.”

  “He does that.”

  “Anyway. He seemed pretty into Kim. He kept talking to her and touching her arm and stuff. I guess his wife must’ve been in the bathroom or something. Then, a few weeks later, I see him come out of Video Hutch and get into Kim’s mom’s car.”

  “The Divorcemobile?”

  “Yeah,” he rolls his eyes. “The fucking Divorcemobile. At first I thought maybe he was banging Mrs. Kivela—she is kind of hot—but when they took off, I could see that Kim was driving.”

  “Huh.”

  In the past couple months, the Kim wound had been healing up pretty nicely, but hearing these new details peels the scab back a little too soon. I try to play it cool, but I can tell Steve is getting a kick out of taking me to school.

  “So,” he continues enthusiastically, “I look up Murdock’s number in the phone book and call it one afternoon, all anonymous and shit.”

  I have a clear and unpleasant vision of putting a quarter into one of the payphones near the main office.

  “Mrs. Murdock answers, and I tell her that maybe her husband isn’t being completely honest with her. I must’ve put a bug in her ear or something—I don’t know, maybe he did something like that before—but I guess she found out. And then I heard she had a total meltdown in your high school. Thought he was sleeping with one of his students. Fucking hi-larious.”

  “So you’re the guy.” I’m not sure if I sound impressed or judgy. Sudbury Steve clearly receives it as the former.
/>   “I do have my moments,” he says and takes a swig of his beer.

  “You know they have a little kid, right?”

  “Hey, what can I say?” he smiles. “All I did was tell the truth. And payback, like our friend Kim, is a bitch.”

  There’s a moment of beer-drinking silence that I use to reroute our conversation.

  “So, have you been to see Matty?”

  He dismisses the question with a wave of his hand. “Everybody’s been to see Matty. Matty’s the most popular guy in town, poor bastard. What you want to know,” he says, levelling a finger at me, “is if I’ve seen your friend Sodapop.”

  “Have you?” The question turns me over and reveals my soft underbelly.

  Steve sighs. “Thaler told me Soda gave you guys the ol’ French Leave”—he air quotes the expression. “That’s pretty cold, man. At least when Thaler kicked me out of the band he did it to my face. Said, ‘We don’t really need a touring trumpet player.’ Shit. Like music has anything to do with need.”

  I shake my head and then drain the rest of my beer. How am I supposed to feel now? All I feel is a little sick to my stomach.

  “After what happened, Thaler was going to call off the tour. It was Matty who actually suggested getting Soda to sing lead.”

  Fucking Matty. Even paralyzed and bedridden, the guy seemed determined to ruin my life.

  “They all left a couple weeks ago. Thaler’s got a rich uncle with this big cottage down in Muskoka. Apparently, they’re going to practise there for the rest of June and then hit the road. They’ve got a booking agent and everything.”

  “And we’re stuck here.”

  “I thought about going back to Sudbury for the summer—” he jerks a thumb in no particular direction “—but I got hired on at the Old Fort, so no worries. With all the high school girls working there, I’ll be up to my eyeballs in teenage pussy.”

  A little fish of nausea swims around in my stomach. Steve looks at my empty bottle.

  “Well, dude, it was good talking to you, but I should let you get going.”

  He asks me to leave like he’s doing me a favour. In a way, I guess he is.