Wicked and Weird

by Rich Terfry

  “I’m sure I can do it.”

  Five minutes later, as we sat with our faces in our hands, Ian’s call came.

  “Woo-hoo!” Ian had saved the day.

  Then, at the end of the tour, he almost got us killed.

  Whenever there was a spare minute, whether during a day off or between sound check and the show, the guys from the band and I played pool. We were hooked. I hadn’t played much before but improved quickly. Soon I could hold my own against any of the guys in the band.

  On a night off in Toronto, Ian and I ventured out looking for a table. He and I were crashing at his girlfriend’s house. She lived near a predominantly Jamaican part of Toronto, and that’s where we found a place to play. When we walked into the pool hall, all eyes were on us. We were the only white guys there; in fact, we quickly got the impression that we may have been the only white guys to ever set foot in the hall. Everyone seemed very surprised to see us, and some people seemed suspicious too. But Ian and I weren’t sweating it. We thought we were hot shit and we were jonesing for pool. We stepped to the counter for a tray of balls and were assigned a table at the back of the large, smoke-filled room.

  Our table was situated perpendicular to a table where a group of four Rastafarian elders were playing. You could tell by the way they quietly commanded the room that they were highly respected figures in the community. They didn’t acknowledge the existence of Ian and me.

  Before starting our first game, Ian and I did a round of rock-paper-scissors to determine who would break. Ian won. He moved to a rack on the wall to choose a cue and selected one the likes of which neither of us had ever seen. It was more of a battering ram than a stick. It was a bit longer and considerably thicker than any cue I’d seen before (or have seen since) and was carved with beautiful detailing. It looked like an antique table leg.

  Ian won the first game we played. I won the second. The third game was closely contested. We went shot for shot. By the end of the game, both of us had sunk all our balls and only the eight ball remained.

  Because we were cheapskates, we had come up with a rule earlier in the trip that to win a game, you had to bank the eight ball at least twice. That would keep the games interesting and would make them last longer, which would save us from having to keep feeding the tables with quarters. It was good practice too. When it was Ian’s turn to try to win this particular game, the cue ball and eight ball were positioned along a straight line up the middle of the table. For laughs, Ian made the call that he would attempt to bank the eight six times before sinking it in the top right corner pocket. Then he went back to the rack for his favourite weapon: the table leg.

  Ian needed all his strength: the ball would have to run the length of the table six and a half times. To gain a bit of extra advantage, he planted his foot on the wall behind him. After lining up his shot carefully, he pushed off the wall with his leg, putting all his body mass and added kinetic energy into it.

  When the white cue ball collided with the black eight ball, it made a deafening crack. The force was great, but it was out of control. The eight ball left the table. It cleared the rail and ripped through the air at a frightening speed. With maximum violence, it hit one of the Rastafarian elders playing at the next table in the back of the head. Everyone in the hall gasped, sucking the air out of the room. The old man fell to the ground.

  Ian backed into the wall, his eyes wide. I was aware of the sound of my heart beating in my ears. The tension in the hall hummed; it tasted like copper.

  After a moment, a younger man picked the eight ball up from the floor. He looked as if he could have crushed it in his hand. With his red eyes he burned hate rays through Ian and me as he moved slowly toward us. Never breaking eye contact, he slammed the ball onto the surface of our table. When he moved his hand away, I expected to see nothing but a pile of black powder. He stood staring at us a few moments more, breathing heavily through his nose. Behind him, the room scrambled to the aid of the fallen elder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him being helped to his feet, dazed but okay.

  Feeling the tonnage of some fifty-odd Jamaican death stares, Ian and I slowly edged along the wall until we reached the front entrance of the pool hall. We backed onto the sidewalk. The night air felt like life. We glanced at each other and then at the legion of teeth and eyes. Murder and sorrow radiated toward us through the doorway and the windows of the pool hall. We turned tail and ran for our lives.

  Soon after that, my first tour as a musician was over.

  •

  During the tour, I had played a bit of ball whenever I could. I went to batting cages. I crashed pickup games in city parks. I played catch with an eleven-year-old girl in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn. The baseball gods weren’t watching. The music gods, however, seemed to be. Or if not the gods, the mad prophets.

  Shortly after I returned home to Halifax, I met a man who looked like Rasputin. I had seen him around town before. He was someone who scared other people. He seemed wild, unpredictable. He had seen me around town too, and thought I was someone who might be able to help him with his experiments. He sought me out to explain his work. We met over tea.

  I learned that he was highly educated. He had once worked as a university professor, but his ideas were too radical and he’d lost his job. Now he lived in poverty, invisible, but he was still passionate about his field of expertise and he continued with his research. He had devoted his life to plants.

  By the time we met, the professor was especially interested in the concept of communicating with plants. He had been experimenting with stimuli and monitoring the plants’ responses. He’d tried talking with plants; he’d tried playing music for plants. After tabulating results yielded from the manipulation of seemingly endless variables, he had concluded that I would be the ideal conduit between the animal and plant worlds. He was very insistent that I had all the qualities he and his plants were looking for: my voice, my music, my size, my age, my eye colour … he’d taken everything into account. He practically begged me to rap to his plants.

  The idea intrigued me. Over a shared platter of Ethiopian food one evening, we talked about how the experiments would work. He asked if I would be willing to write a song especially for the plants. I told him I would love to and asked for as much direction as he could give me. He said the song should have a steady beat, but that it shouldn’t be too heavy or harsh. He wanted the main musical melody to be simple and repetitive. He told me that his tests with whistling and plucked stringed instruments like guitars and banjos had yielded positive results. He wanted my vocal tone to be as soothing as possible and the lyrics to conjure as many images as possible. He said the song didn’t have to make sense as long as vivid images filled it. After dinner, I ran home with my notes and went straight to work.

  For the next few days, I wrote down any image that stuck with me—anything I saw on the street or through my window or any evocative snippet of overheard conversation. The result was a song called “Highway 101.” The title came from the road that runs between Halifax and Mount Uniacke. It was always being discussed in the local newspapers under headlines that read “The Curse of the 101 Strikes Again” or words to that effect. People believed there was a hex on the highway because it had been the scene of an inordinate number of fatal accidents. In my lyrics I included a reference to receiving my first fan letter recently, from a young woman in California. Included with her letter were several close-up photographs of her vagina. She had written that she’d had the photos printed at her local Walmart and that the person who worked the photo counter had given her a “funny look.”

  The professor’s house was like a jungle, completely filled with life. It held almost every kind of plant you can imagine and many you probably can’t. I had never seen many of them before. One room was designated as a laboratory and that’s where we did our work. He had wires and electrodes connected to the stems, stalks and stamens of various trees, flowers and succulents. I visited once a week for several months and p
erformed “Highway 101” into a special rig, the signals of which were received by the flora.

  The results were amazing. The plants grew—some of them wildly. My new friend was thrilled and I came to really love the strange little song I had written for him. During one of my last visits, I asked if it would be okay to make a recording of my performance. The professor agreed to this on the simple condition that I make a copy for him, which I did.

  It turned out that the day I gave him a copy of the song was the last day I saw him. His tests had been conducted, data collected, results recorded and his conclusion drawn. He was ready to move on to the testing of his next hypothesis, for which he didn’t need my help. The professor’s experiments with me were over.

  Soon, however, I was given the chance to collaborate with another academic.

  Gian-Carlo Rota was a mathematician and philosopher who had worked for much of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was born in Italy, lived in Switzerland for a time, and then went to school in Ecuador before earning degrees at Princeton and Yale. He taught applied mathematics and philosophy. Within mathematics, his areas of expertise were in probability, applied calculus, differential equations and combinatorial theory. It was in the area of combinatorial theory that he did some of his most renowned work, studying something called “higher-order syzygies.” Rota was known to be temperamental. Sometimes he gave knives as prizes to students who did well on tests. And he never taught a class without a can of Coca-Cola within arm’s reach. The reading room in MIT’s Department of Mathematics was dedicated to him after he passed away in 1999.

  Not long before he died, Rota was feted at a mathematics conference at Harvard University. Mathematicians from around the world were invited to celebrate his life and legacy. Among those mathematicians was the father of a girl I had started dating. He lived and worked in Paris. Before heading to Cambridge, he stopped by Halifax for a visit.

  When he arrived, he explained that as part of the festivities in Cambridge, there would be a contest to see who could present Rota’s work—specifically his work with syzygies—in the most creative way. My girlfriend’s father was determined to win that contest. He took a keen interest in me, my music and the fact that I was a science student. He asked if I would help him make a song about syzygies.

  For a week, I received a crash course on high-level mathematics from one of the brightest mathematical minds in the world. On the first night, he taught me all about Rota, his background and his personality. Then, for the following several nights, we burned the midnight oil, working on formulas and solving complex algebraic equations.

  I had always done well in math in school, but it had never come easy to me. It was always my toughest subject and I had to work very, very hard at it. Now I was being thrust into its deepest waters. It was agony. My brain ached. I cried in frustration. At a few points, my girlfriend’s dad and I almost came to blows. But in the wee hours of the morning on the day he had to leave for Cambridge, I had a breakthrough. I understood. My brain had developed new muscles. I felt what I imagine Olympic gymnasts must when they learn a new vault or tumbling pass. It was exhilarating. As soon as I had a firm grasp on the concept, I banished everyone from the room and set to work writing and recording my song. In an hour, it was done.

  During that weekend of the conference at Harvard, I couldn’t sleep. I now wanted to win that contest as badly as my girlfriend’s father did. I sat by the phone, waiting to hear how we’d made out. Late on Sunday evening, the call came. We had won. We’d beaten the greatest mathematicians in the world in a math contest at Harvard University. My girlfriend’s dad took the prizes—the money and car and so on. I received nothing. But I didn’t care; the win itself was a great feather in my cap.

  My relationship with the mathematician’s daughter didn’t last long. After we broke up, I moved into a great old house with a group of friends from my music-scene circle. There were four or five of us. The place was huge. I was sold on it as soon as I saw that each bedroom had its own sink.

  The day we went to look at the place, the landlord cautioned us that the house was haunted. A couple of my friends were freaked out by the prospect, but not enough to back out. And I wasn’t bothered at all; I didn’t believe it for a second.

  After a few months in the place, each of my roommates had had an experience with the “ghost.” The most common occurrence was being locked in the basement when doing laundry. Soon my roommates got into the habit of not only leaving the basement door open when doing a laundry run, but also having someone stand by the door and wait for them. Laundry became a two-person operation. Every run-in with the ghost was darkly prankish, so the belief was that the ghost was a malevolent presence.

  Almost a full year passed and I still hadn’t run afoul of the ghost. I figured this must have been because of my deep-seated skepticism. But then one Saturday, I arrived home late in the afternoon. No one else was in the house. I had a show that night and I decided to run through my set in my bedroom before heading to the venue for sound check. When I left my room an hour and a half later, it was clear someone had come home. The lights were on. The front door was open. There was a mess in the living room and in the kitchen. The TV was blaring. I figured one of my roommates had returned and, by the look of things, made dinner.

  I felt a bit embarrassed, because whoever it was would have heard me making a racket and acting silly in my bedroom. I called out “Hello?” No answer. I poked my head into each bedroom: no one. I was definitely the only person in the house. But, I convinced myself, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe someone had come home and left again. Maybe they had run to the corner store.

  When I got back from my show later that night, all my roommates were hanging out in the living room, watching a movie. I apologized for the noise I had made earlier in the evening. One by one, my roommates said they hadn’t been home at the time. Each of them had been out all day; each had returned home in the past hour or so.

  When I told them what had happened, my roommates were excited that I’d had my first experience with the ghost—particularly because I had been such a staunch unbeliever. Admittedly, I had the heebie-jeebies now. Either a ghost had caused mischief earlier that evening while I was rehearsing or someone had broken into the house. Either way: not cool.

  A few nights later, I was home alone again. I made the most of the situation by treating myself to a nice long shower. Washing my hair, I got shampoo in my eyes. It stung, so I shut my eyes tight while I rinsed the soap away. As I was doing so, a creepy feeling came over me. I felt the presence of someone else in the room. I felt it so strongly that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I finished rinsing and opened my eyes; the lights in the bathroom had been turned off. It was pitch-black. I was scared shitless. I jumped out of the shower to turn the lights on, but the switch didn’t work. I could tell the lights were off in the hallway too because there was no light spilling under the door. I fiddled with the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. I was locked in. I started to panic. Finally, I rammed the door with my shoulder and busted it open.

  The hallway was as dark as the bathroom. None of the lights in the house worked. As I moved away from the bathroom and the sound of the shower, I could hear music coming from my bedroom—a song called “Pulling a Train” by Six Finger Satellite. The tune is a relentless attack of bee-swarm guitars and machine-gun drums and it was playing full blast. I’ve always liked that song, but in this particular moment it was the most terrifying thing I could possibly hear.

  I ran out of the house, grabbing a blanket off the couch in the living room as I passed. I wrapped myself in the blanket and waited outside under a streetlight until one of my roommates came home. Together we walked back up the steps to the front door and inside. The lights worked. There was no music playing (in fact, the power on my stereo was off). The water in the shower wasn’t running. The prank was over.

  I lived in that house for just another few months. I had no oth
er strange experiences. And I still love that Six Finger Satellite song. But it always gives me a spooky feeling when I hear it.

  •

  During this time, I was confused in heart and mind. With my mother gone and the baseball gods torturing me with their silence, I was searching for meaning in my life. I was drowning in a river of ghosts and miracles, of formulas and equations, of prayers and curses, of home runs and hormones. The current that pulled me through those waters was music. Music—equal parts science and religion—once again took control of my life at a time when I didn’t know where to turn.

  I was offered a tour of cities in southern Ontario. It was a package deal with another act—a Halifax-based outfit made up of three friends of mine: Aaron, Bo and Cedric. Adventure was calling my name. Fun was to be had. And Halifax was asking me a lot of questions but not giving me any answers. So I took the offer without hesitation, despite the gaping holes: no expenses were covered and the money wasn’t great. It didn’t matter. I had to go.

  The four of us hitched a ride to Toronto with another local band heading there too. We had no plan for getting back home but agreed to worry about that later, figuring—naively—that we’d make enough money to at least pay our way.

  The shows were fun, but a total bust—the ones that didn’t fall through, that is. The promoters we were dealing with were either clueless amateurs or shady. At the end of most nights, we weren’t paid at all. The money we did make was barely enough to feed us. When the run was over, we were broke, stranded, screwed.

  We put our tails between our legs and called our parents to beg. One by one each of us was told that we’d got ourselves into the mess and we’d have to get ourselves out. The last to make the call was Aaron and through him we caught a lucky break. Aaron’s parents told him that his grandfather was about to make a trip from Ontario to Nova Scotia; maybe we could get a ride with him. Aaron’s grandfather drove a van. It was perfect. A few more calls and a plan was in place.