“Hello there.”
Ellen stands on the bank, closing the front of her bathrobe: a reeve in a bathrobe is better than no reeve at all. The person in the water stops and turns toward her with a splash.
“Excuse me, hello, is everything alright in there?”
“What do you mean?”
The man’s voice is whiny and defensive. There is something disturbing in the question.
“I’m Ellen Peterson, the reeve of Pontypool. There’s a great deal of trouble in the area tonight, and I’m asking if everything is OK with you in there. Aren’t you cold?”
Another voice to her left.
“Why, if he’s cold will he freeze?”
The voice, so tremulous, makes her shiver. The question somehow hasn’t been put to her rhetorically.
“Well, no, I don’t think he’ll freeze.”
A third voice in the bushes behind her.
“Are you lying to him? Is he going to freeze?”
The voice is so frightened that Ellen covers her mouth.
The man in the water has slipped behind the boulder and he holds its sides with his hands.
“If you’re lying to me then you could hate me.”
Ellen drops her hand. She feels the pull of sadness in the light that has emerged on the surface of the tree hiding these people.
“I don’t know you; I couldn’t … hate you.”
The head and shoulders of the man to her left glide into view at the centre of the pool.
“You don’t hate him yet. But if you don’t know him will you stab him with a knife?”
The man behind her squeals sharply, and he flees crashing through the trees. Ellen can’t quite believe this conversation. She has no idea how to meet its requirements.
The conversation that she is having isn’t, of course, normal.
That conversation would have its several participating members hitting a variety of vocal registers using a tiny lexicon. This lexicon has migrated to them from Parkdale, and they communicate through it with the sonic sensitivity of birds. They repeat the words Helen, help and hello in an evolution of the alliteration that’s more like an imbrication, shingling the words over a now silent H. And exactly who is stepping down into the pond and repeating the phrase “messy car, dirty bird”? Ellen has not detected the eighteen silent beings that surround the pool, hiding in fear among the trees. Each of them moves three words from cheek to cheek, like loose peas in a whistle.
“What do you mean stab you?”
Ellen’s robe rides in a terry cloth wake around her as she steps through the water toward the boulder.
“That’s what I said. That’s what I meant.”
Ellen stops still as three other beings float out from under branches that overhang the pool’s edge. They move steadily in the moonlight, forming a guard around the boulder.
“He means what he said. Now you want to kill him.”
“No. I don’t.”
“If you don’t want to kill him, does that mean that you want to run him over with a car?”
One of the silhouettes yelps as if struck and dives to the side.
“I … I … don’t want to hurt any of you.”
Ellen is aware that the pool is now occupied by at least a dozen of these strange people.
“Not hurt? Not hurt? Do you mean not hurt now, but later? Like in the morning you’ll want to punch all of us? Punch us with a cannon?”
“Or a missile?”
“Or … or … maybe poison?”
“And angry now? Are you angry now?”
Three zombies splash at the water in a strange seizure that ends in one of them attacking another. The zombie being attacked strokes the back of his assailant with a consoling hand. The assailant bites uncontrollably at the man’s chest, opening a honeycomb of muscle and flesh. The victim soon slides under the water, and his mouth, the last cup on his body to be filled, glides away to drown. Ellen feels a panic lock her.
The killer stands up straight and exhales heavily, sending a piece of tongue flipping into the water. A woman directly behind Ellen speaks.
“Say sorry.”
The killer shakes his hands in the water. He closes his eyes, and in an emotional outburst that is small and painful he rolls his head back.
“I can’t.”
Ellen steps forward, her heart pounding in her chest. She raises open hands across the water and moves slowly toward the killer.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
A teenage girl jumps out of a tree and stands in a moonlit path that drops into the pool.
“He doesn’t?”
Ellen feels a carp slide itself like a cat against her ankle. A mile long. She catches her breath and waits for it to pass.
“No, he doesn’t have to be sorry.”
Another carp swims into Ellen’s joined heels. She turns her foot, letting it move between her calves. It’s slippery and fat and it tickles. A group of eight zombies moves quietly off the bank into the water. Several of them ask the same question at once.
“It’s OK that he killed Albert?”
Ellen scoops water up onto her dry lips. She notices the little bump of Albert’s floating tongue.
“It’s OK. It’s OK.”
27
Policy
Now the pool is becoming crowded with quiet zombies. They all seem to like being submerged up to their chests, so when they enter the water they sink to their knees in the mud and stone of its black bottom. Ellen is standing and she appears elevated on an artificial surface. Ellen notices that some of them have turned their backs and are busily working at something on the bank at the water’s edge. The soft fan of a tail runs against her shin. The carp is sitting on the floor of the pool, stationary. It caresses Ellen’s leg, and she is reminded again of a cat.
Nearly all the zombies have turned their backs on her. A woman working beside the fallen log turns her head to a man beside her.
“It’s OK to kill biting, y’know.”
The man remains hunched over.
“And I know it’s OK to tear fuckin’ fuckers’ heads off.”
The woman pulls from her spot and turns to Ellen.
“Is it OK?”
Ellen can see mud dripping down the woman’s chin. It looks like the chinstrap of a warrior’s helmet.
“Is what OK?”
All of the zombies stop, some of them grab the tree branches above their heads. A rhythm of ripples on the water’s surface smoothes. Ellen slips farther under, to her knees. She feels the little plosive blast as her carp propels itself off her thigh.
“It’s OK to … uh … sure, it’s OK.”
“How about killing them?”
Ellen feels a carp’s face in the upturned soul of her foot. It extends its sucker mouth and kisses her there. Ellen answers the question through a smile caused by a second carp on her other foot.
“Killing them is alright.”
“And slapping and slapping all the assholes in their heads?”
“Yes. Yes. It’s OK.”
“What else is alright?”
The carp have now settled into a synchronized kissing and Ellen drops her hands to her sides. She feels the soft drapery of fish moving along the insides of her wrists.
“Anything.”
“Can’t I ask?”
A zombie becomes agitated and turns from the bank.
“If she asks are you going to hit her in the ass?”
“No, no, she can ask whatever she wants.”
“Can I too?”
“Yes.”
“OK, OK. Is it OK to have a policeman banging on the door?”
“Yes.”
“Me too, me too. Um, I don’t have a question.”
“Will you bash his face in if he doesn’t have a question?”
“No. No, I won’t.”
As they turn and lobby questions at Ellen she finds herself struggling, with some success, to configure the affirmation. She begins to focus her eyes on
what it is that they’re doing on the bank. A busy geometry of forms begins to emerge. It sits lit on the surface of the dark and appears like a computer language, a dense and complex glyphic architecture. The patterns emerging are uniform all around her. Ellen recognizes something in the tightly braided wall. She remembers doing things. After she got sick. She remembers emptying an ice cube tray into the sink and filling it again. Returning it to the freezer. And the terrible waiting for the water to freeze so that she could refill it with fresh water. It was in filling those awful hours that Ellen built, out of the contents of a cupboard, her library of seals. She recalls her surprise, her astonishment, that she was able to create and retain an infinite machine on a single shelf in the pantry. The complex stability of the number six in a can of pears, each half-fruit changing. The not-yet-ten in tiers across the cookie bag. The disappointing threes risen into a number only guessed at, but always guessed correctly, by a red hexagonal tower in the shadows. And when she had finished visiting her shelf she would check the ice cubes. And if they were not yet frozen, maybe nearly, little windowed boxes of water, she’d sit at the kitchen table and feel comfortable that she had set things in motion.
On the surface of the white cupboards a scroll of light marks fly rapidly from left to right — the stories released by the machines behind their doors, and Ellen memorizes each one. Some days they are the long, incomprehensible speeches of angels. Sometimes they detail the death of a child. And other times they list all of the things that Ellen hasn’t said yet. If these marks were to stop moving and rise in relief from the cupboards, and lift off like a new wall, slipping through the floor to line the banks of a pond in the dark, then Ellen would be looking at them over the shoulders of busy zombies. She strokes the head of a giant fish banging against her knees and opens her legs. These poor people have all suffered strokes. A zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggshells and plastic bottles.
28
Hungry Like The Wolf
What is an autobiography? What can fairly be said to lie within its bounds, share in its purpose? Is there someone hidden in Les Reardon? Was he a garbage truck driver who had a psychotic breakdown? Did he then become a drama teacher? Did a woman one month pregnant leave him in the middle of this career shift? Did he battle zombies across Ontario in a stolen car with his son wailing in drug withdrawal beside him? Are these little autobiographemes inserted into imagined lives? Probably. But still, that’s not autobiography. Not really.
Is this an autobiography?
Yes.
29
Autobiography
Twelve years ago you were living on the streets of Vancouver. You panhandled every day on Robson with a partner named Tommy. Those were miserable days — the good ones spent on the nod, the bad ones spent in a Lysol induced aggression. You had come to these dire straits in the usual way — an enduring dependence on substances and a persistent holocaust of personality. Usual, yes, but very difficult to survive. You tell this story not to mark yourself with it or to gain sympathy — it is, after all, only the story of a stubborn little bastard. You are telling this story, or at least just enough of it, so that you will never have to mention it again.
This one day you stirred to life beneath a shrub in Oppenhiemer Park. The shirt you were wearing had a light green fuzz growing across the back. You remember it because it was pretty. You had a sharp pain in your right forearm. You made your way across the park to where you knew Tommy would be waiting. You noticed you were getting a lot of attention from people who had, like you, spent the night in the park. There was something wrong with the way you looked. You remember someone saying to you, “In the first month you get stabbed; in the second month you’ll stab someone.” You had the feeling that somehow you were entering one of those months when people pay their last respects. Tommy grabbed you by your good arm and hurried you towards Robson. He was excited about something that had happened. At the best of times you can’t understand him and this morning he’s so stimulated by something that you can only grunt back at him in the language you share. You know that you have been barking at people lately. In fact, that’s why you got thrown out of the Columbia Hotel. “Do you know you’ve been barking at people in the lobby?” You shrug miserably at this kind of question. No, I’m afraid I didn’t know.
You notice people staring at you while Tommy pantomimes a little war scene. You smile and feel something warm drip off your chin. You cup your hand against your face and watch it fill with fresh blood. Oh dear. Sometimes you can’t help notice how sick you’re becoming. You look over your shoulder, but nobody’s looking. They have stopped staring. Tommy drags you into a public washroom. You throw up in the sink. It’s a dry heave, productive only in the spray of blood it forces out of your face. You look up into the mirror. You have two black eyes, cut deeply, and a missing eyebrow. Your bottom lip has fallen free of your mouth and is lying in the fresh blood on your chin.
You can’t pretend that you don’t feel very sorry for this man and his self-portrait. He has completely lost the ability to take care of himself. He will die soon, and the fact that that is merely all he ever wanted doesn’t make you feel any less protective of him now. You remember looking in the mirror and feeling awe: the self-portrait is complete. You think that you have found the face that can finally say goodbye.
That’s when Tommy slipped, unconscious, to the floor. You stepped over his body to find him a coffee. When you returned a few minutes later an ambulance was pulled up on the grassy hill that sloped down to the men’s washroom. Two attendants were putting Tommy’s body in the back of the vehicle. You attempted to stop them, dropping the coffees and yelling what you can’t say for certain now wasn’t barking. You tried to tell them that he was fine, that he just needed coffee, that he’d be OK. You tried to tell them that you needed him. As the ambulance drove off you felt an idea throbbing in your forearm. You’ll meet him at the emergency. You’ll tell them about your arm. They’ll let you in.
No one at the hospital had seen or heard of Tommy. You waited for three hours to see a doctor. Every time a door opened or a gurney banged through swinging glass you’d look up for your friend. One of the effects of the wait that you hadn’t counted on was that you were beginning a fairly complicated process of withdrawal. Your legs began to hurt. Your arm began to shake.
When the doctor finally takes you in she searches the holes and bruises in your head. It’s not your head, however, that you want her to look at. It’s your arm and you hold it up. She holds it gently and lays cool fingers on your wrist. She disappears, and soon a technician appears to take you to X-ray. It takes him a few runs to get a good shot. Your arm is jumping around. You feel miserable about this because you like working with people. He is impatient — with himself you think — and when he gets a satisfactory picture he puts a hand on your shoulder, including you in the success.
“Well, there’s three hairline fractures on your fibula.”
The doctor supports your hand by the palm with three of her powerful fingers.
“We’ll have to put it in a cast.”
She lays your arm on your thigh and it jumps up across your knee. She watches this and then turns to a cabinet. She pulls a gauze sleeve over your wrist and your fingers catch on the fibre, each one snapping out independently. She stops. You can tell that she’s looking at your face, your self-portrait. You don’t look up. You hold it as still as you can.
“You’re going to have some trouble with this. I’m going to get a Valium for you, maybe two.”
When she leaves you hold your forearm up. A long, white glove. You let a falcon land on it and draw it closer, allowing its hooked beak to close on your lips. The bird flits a tiny brown tongue along the rip of your bottom lip. By the time the doctor returns you have an erection. You fold your wrists in your lap and as she unties the swollen arm from the thin o
ne she sees your cock standing against the filthy fabric of your crotch. It’s confusing to you. Clear to her. She places two powder blue pills in your good hand and you pop them across your mouth and down your throat. She leaves again; to let the benzodiazapine have its effect, you think.
Your arm softens in your lap, your erection subsides, and you feel the emotional catchbasin of interrupted withdrawal back up, clogging your pores, drying your forehead. More of a wreck for the abating anxiety. There is an opiate drizzling weakly across the agony in your back.
The doctor comes back.
“Do you drink?”
You smile. Well, isn’t it a shame?
“I notice you have track marks on your arms.”
You make a face like Buster Keaton, tilting your jaw. Yes, the problem is huge, altogether too far gone, I think.
“I’ve been talking to another physician and he’s calling a detox for you now.”
You look up. No, you don’t have to do that for me, but thank you so very much. Do you think it will help? Doctor? You can tell she likes you, which is such a strong feeling that you are already looking forward to saying goodbye. A man appears in the door and they look at each other. A sweet history of desire links them and you believe, as you watch them, you see her panties tugging upward and the jelly mould of his cock melting down his leg. You believe that they are becoming linked through you.
“Uh … I contacted a detox and, well, you’ve been banned from there for thirty days.”
The female doctor drags four spears of black hair from her forehead with the plaster-speckled back of her hand.
“Well, there’s more than one detox in the city.”
You think they will take you home.
“Yeah, I know doctor, I’ve tried a few actually, and there’s a …” He nods to you, too late to say serious things, it’s time to load the bier. “There’s a province-wide ban on the fella.”
The doctor looks at you. The worse you are, the more you matter to her. She would do anything not to insult you now. Now that you are what these two have always shared, the patient still living who will be lost. She pauses dramatically over the wounds on your face, and you turn your head slightly, so the light catches the medical rainbow that bends across your left cheek.
Pontypool Changes Everything Page 8