Monstrous Affections

by David Nickle

  Dave nodded. “Better put him back in the lake.” He reached down nervously with thumb and forefinger, tried to snatch the flopping tail once, and again. From the washroom, the trombonist objected.

  Vincent motioned to the cracked-open door. “Tub’s almost full.” Steve pushed Dave’s hand out of the way and grabbed the fish around the middle. It was lake-slick, hard to hold at first, but being off the stoop seemed to calm it and carrying got easier. We all followed Steve and the trout to the bath, watched as he lowered the fish to the surface of the water and let him slide in. Water splashed onto the linoleum floor. Dave turned the faucet off, which the trombonist had left to run.

  “Fish will be okay.” Steve shook the water off his hands and wiped them dry on his jeans. He went back to the drum kit, picked up his sticks, remembered what the fish said, put them back. “Better keep it down,” he said to us, and we agreed.

  We sat back. Passed the bong around. Sounds of the bowed guitar solo from “Dazed and Confused,” transcribed for trombone, wafted in from the dock. Water splashed in the tub. Steve apologized, got up to shut the door on the music, the view: golden slide on a middle-finger tilt to the clouds’ bulging black gut. Definitely rain.

  “Have to talk about him.” Vincent. Thumb cocked to the doorway. The dock.

  The trombonist.

  We all agreed that we did — opportunity not having arisen for two days now: from the time Steve pulled the van into the mall parking lot and we all waited as Dave found a spot in the trailer for the trombone case . . . from then to the beer and grocery run on arrival, the jam. Not a moment. So first order of business, now the fish was safe away and the trombone stand empty, was to put it to Steve:

  “Where’d you meet him?”

  “Back at the Rook?”

  Steve shook his head. The Rook was a club downtown we played at, from time to time, back in the day. Steve sometimes still hung there. The Rook wasn’t it. “Met him the same time you all did. When we pulled into the lot.”

  “How’d you know to go there, then?”

  “You seemed pretty sure of where you were going. You know he was going to be there?”

  That one left Steve short. Steve guessed he did know he was going to be there, standing under the floodlit entrance at the south end of mall, the hockey bag with his stuff propped next to the long black trombone case, which stood upright on the bell. Question suggested Steve had got a phone call or a note to set time and place, and Steve couldn’t say that he had.

  Finally: “Neither of you seemed surprised when the time came. Dave, you helped him load up. Looked like you two were catching up on old times.”

  “Point, there. What’d you talk about, Dave?”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  “Quit fucking around. We don’t have a lot of time here.”

  Dave hadn’t been fucking around. Mystery is what it was. “Talked about a lot of things. Can’t say exactly.” Wasn’t good enough, and Dave knew it. He frowned and thought a moment. “Asked him if he was still using the valve trombone, or’d gone slide.” Which we all knew was a strange thing to ask, given Dave had met him the same time we did and had no idea what type horn he used to play. “Slide, he said. Same as always. He asked me . . .” Bong went to Dave. “Mmm. Asked me if I wanted it.”

  “The trombone?”

  “No. Something else. Didn’t say what. But something else.”

  Bong went to Vincent, then Steve. Thunder came and went. Dave got up, came back with beer. Took the bong. We thought about that question: Did Dave want it? From that: Did we want it? Was it worth having? Rain started up.

  “So who is he?” Vincent. “We never had a trombone back in the day. I remember that much.”

  “Our music doesn’t lend itself to trombone.”

  “You wouldn’t think.”

  “And yet.”

  We grew thoughtful. On the one hand, we remembered how it was: band class and bands didn’t mix. Dave had made that clear from Day One, as we hunched in the dull October light, greying our grey cafeteria lunches further. Dave wouldn’t even tolerate a lead singer — and if one of us pointed out Robert Plant by way of argument, well we could just fuck off. Steve and his axe, Steve and the microphone. Same thing. And for band class?

  “Point of this is not formal training. Point is, you got to feel the music — that’s how Jimmy does it. That’s how we do it.” Plenty of trombonists in band class. And who needed them?

  On the other hand . . .

  “I helped him load his trombone into the trailer.” Dave, perplexed. “I know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What?”

  “Far as what the trombonist asked if you wanted it. What, exactly?”

  Vincent.

  Always got the Friday fish and chips. Wispy moustache over baby-smooth chin. That and the belly fat and the greasy black hair not quite straight inoculated him against the attention of the big-haired girls — Sue, Maryann, Sue’s friend . . . who? . . . the big-haired girls who followed us set to set, tried to keep up, talk about the way the music moved, finally reduced to regurgitating tag-lines from Creem critiques and just nodding, kneeling on the floor while Dave told them how truly full of shit they were, showed them what he meant on air guitar.

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  Dave, who’d stopped being such an asshole long back.

  Steve cracked a beer. “Sure you do. You want the music. Always have.”

  Dave thought he should tell the rest of us how full of shit we were on that count. But we looked at him that way we did. He nodded.

  Rain like applause on the roof. Water splashed in the washroom. We all sat quiet, not wanting to upset the fish any more than it was. Figuring the storm would send him back inside soon anyhow, rainwater dribbling a line from spit valve back to the kitchen chair he’d occupied all day, before the door chimed.

  “Speaking of the fish.”

  “Trout.”

  “Trout. You’re sure he thinks we’re too loud?”

  “Asked us to keep it down.”

  “Asked you to keep it down. Not like we heard anything.”

  “You saying I made it up, Vince?”

  “Not saying that at all. But I got to wonder: that fish tell you to keep it down the same way you knew to stop at the mall before we left town?”

  “You see what he’s saying?”

  “What we’re getting at?”

  What we were getting at was this: perhaps Steve had heard directions from Vincent’s house to the south entrance of the mall as a faint whisper in his ear, in a language that he had not heard since the womb, or even prior that.

  “I see.” Steve stepped into the washroom. Shut the door. Set his beer down on the sink. Looked down at the trout, which hung near the drain, still as death.

  Steve, alone in the washroom. Sucked a deep breath. Looked at his hands, thicker now than then, white little lines along the creases . . . Thought about how they once held one of the big-hair girls — Sue’s friend, the one with the red hair and the freckles on her shoulders. Her name wouldn’t come to him. But her face — wide mouth, cheekbones sharp . . . eyes that looked at him, seemed to see him . . .

  Not the one he’d married.

  That one now: she never saw us — playing, we mean. Steve could barely summon her face; when he did, it was obliterated by hot lights, the smell of old beer and cigarettes. Steve took a long breath. Blinked. Thought:

  I used to be . . .

  Steve regarded the trout, lowered his finger to touch the surface of the water. Trout twitched its tail, swung suddenly around to back of tub. And she came to him.

  Her.

  A day ago, standing in the driveway, left foot jittering in its flip-flop, arms crossed, as Steve hitched the trailer to the back of the van. Hot summer wind blew piss-yellow air from the highway, coloured by the afternoon rush. Her brow creased; not angry, not exactly.

  “We have to get on the road.”

  Might have said
more; but too much had been said already. And he knew it. She thought he smoked too much; thought this was a bad time to go off.

  Night before: she boiled it down for him as they lay together.

  “You’re disappearing.”

  “Stare into the abyss,” he said softly, staring that night at the square of silver the street lamp made on the ceiling. Staring.

  Listening.

  Humming along.

  “Don’t go,” she said. Fingers fluttered at his chest.

  That day: She shook her head, threw up her hands. Went back inside.

  This day: Trout splashed. Agitated, in clean bathwater.

  Dying.

  Rain hit on the roof. Wind blew across the open window like it was the top of a beer bottle. That was it: we kept ourselves quiet. “Dazed and Confused” was long done. Steve took a breath. Swallowed his beer in two big gulps.

  There was a wide plastic bucket under the sink. Steve took the bucket, lowered it into the tub so it filled with water. Trout swam into it. Steve lifted it out with both arms.

  “Trout didn’t mean be quiet.” Steve, on his way to the front door. “Meant what it said.”

  Vincent: “Keep it down?”

  “Keep what down?” Dave.

  “Same thing trombonist asked you about. Not the music, either. More.” Steve, outside now. “But it’s too fuckin’ late.”

  The rain soaked us fast under storm-black sky. Squinting, hand sheltering eyes, it was hard to see where the lake started.

  We made for the dock, empty now. Walked out to the end of it. Dave had been right: should have taken fish back to the lake right away. Claw-footed bathtub was no place for a six-pound lake trout. Dave helped Steve lower the bucket to the water, dip it below the surface. Splashed. Trout jumped out, scales breaking surface in a broad arch. Lightning flashed, dazzlingly close. Trout corkscrewed deep into the black.

  “Be free!” Vincent, arms up in the air. Steve, lowering himself to sit on the soaking dock. Dave, standing, half-finished beer in his right hand, held shoulder height; left hand, absently noodling the strings of his invisible axe; head bobbing to the rhythm of an inaudible drummer.

  The rain was cold and hard but not unpleasant. Not on any of us. Vincent reminded us of the St. Patrick’s Day set, back at the Rook, that year. Dave wrapped tight in blue spandex culled from the ladies’ section of the Goodwill. Wailing out “Misty Mountain Hop” like we owned it. Steve smiled, blinked away the water running down his forehead, pasting thinning hair into his eyes. Looked out at the water, black stipple frosted with misted rain. He flipped over the bucket, started tapping. Vincent, pointing back at the house. Door wide open. Light spilling out. Three gentle strums across the worn strings on Dave’s acoustic, warming up for a run on “Black Mountain Side.”

  “The tape?”

  Dave shook his head. “Missed that bridge last time. Off my game. Listen.”

  A shadow moved across the door. “Black Mountain Side” took shape. “He’s in there.” Vincent. Started back.

  Not just him. Another lightning flash. Close — thunder right away. There was Dave, hunched over the guitar. Fingers in their intricate dance. Head bobbing. Behind him: Steve. Tap-tapping on the wood block. Head bobbing in time with Dave. Vincent was there too. But hard to see him through the door. Didn’t matter: the noodling acoustic of “Black Mountain Side” doesn’t have much to do for a bass player. Less still for a trombonist.

  He stepped outside. Just a step. Onto the stoop. Palm cupped outward to catch some rain, horn resting on his shoulder so the slide caught even more, making little round jewels on the golden finish, running tributaries ’round the bell, feeding the torrent running off the bottom to the trombonist’s toe.

  “I was wrong,” said Steve, and Vincent frowned and thought and said, “Yeah,” in slow drawl, and Dave asked Steve, “What?”

  And he shrugged horn from shoulder, set mouthpiece to lip, and he blew that long, sad note, and Dave saw what we were talking about:

  Black plywood stage underfoot, lights hot as noon, air humid with beer-fume and lung-smoke. Us.

  “You were wrong about the Rook.”

  “Yeah.”

  And we looked at each other through the thick air of the Rook on that night, and Dave turned to the microphone, and swung fingers over string, barely touching, and that note — that same long note — it rose up behind him, behind everything, and Steve thought: Stare into the abyss. The abyss stares back.

  Sing to it. It might just join in.

  Rain came harder again. No end to the lake now. No start, either. And trombone fell from lips. But the song remained.

  And so we slipped through it, a flash of scale in the deepening dark, while Steve and Dave and even Vincent finished the Side, and the deep and incongruous moan of the trombone carried us back.

  The Inevitability of Earth

  When Michael was just a kid, Uncle Evan made a movie of Grandfather. He used an old eight-millimetre camera that wound up with a key and had three narrow lenses that rotated on a plate. Michael remembered holding the camera. It was supposedly lightweight for its time, but in his six-year-old hands, it seemed like it weighed a tonne. Uncle Evan had told him to be careful with it; the camera was a precision instrument, and it needed to be in good working order if the movie was going to be of any scientific value.

  The movie was of Grandfather doing his flying thing — flapping his arms with a slow grace as he shut his eyes and turned his long, beakish nose to the sky. Most of the movie was only that: a thin, middle-aged man, flapping his arms, shutting his eyes, craning his neck. Grandfather’s apparent foolishness was compounded by the face of young Michael flashing in front of the lens; blocking the scene, and waving like an idiot himself. Then the camera moved, and Michael was gone —

  And so was Grandfather.

  The view shook and jostled for an instant, and the family garden became a chaos of flowers and greenery. Finally, Uncle Evan settled on the pale blue equanimity of the early-autumn sky. A black dot careered across the screen, from the left to the right and top to the bottom. Then there was a momentary black, as Uncle Evan turned the lenses from wide-angle to telephoto. The screen filled with the briefest glimpse — for the film was about to run out — of grandfather’s slender figure, his white shirt-tails flapping behind him, all of him held high above the ground by nothing more substantial than the slow beating of his arms; the formidable strength of his will against the Earth.

  Michael groaned and lifted his hand from the cool plastic covering of the armchair. He reached over and flipped the switch on the old projector. The end of the film slapped against the projector frame and the light in the box dimmed. The slapping stopped and the screen went black, and the ember at the tip of his grandmother’s cigarette was the only light source in the basement rec room.

  “I remember that day.” Michael’s voice sounded choked and emotional, near to tears, and it surprised him. He wasn’t an emotional man as a rule, and he hadn’t cried since . . . since who knew when? Maybe the day that film was made. It also dismayed him — sentiment was a bond, and he couldn’t afford more bonds. Not if he wanted to follow Grandfather.

  “Do you?” said Grandmother. Her voice was deepened by smoke, surprisingly mannish in the dark. “You were very young.”

  “It was a formative moment,” he said. “It’s not every day one sees one’s grandfather fly,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I should think no one would forget such an event.”

  In the dark, Grandmother coughed, and coughed again. It took Michael a moment to realize she wasn’t coughing at all; she was laughing. “What is it?” he said irritably.

  “Your formality,” she said, and paused. The end of her cigarette glowed furiously as she inhaled. “I’m sorry, dear — I don’t mean to laugh at you. You come to visit me here, and I’d hate you to think I’m not grateful for your company, after all these years without so much as a phone call. But I can see how you’d like to find him.”


  “Can you?”

  Michael felt a cloud of smoke envelop him and he choked again — this time, he thought, with more legitimacy. Grandmother was a rancid old creature, stale and fouled with her age; he’d be glad, finally, to be rid of her along with everyone else when he finally took to the sky.

  “Yes,” she said. “The two of you are of a kind — you look alike, you walk alike, you speak alike. You, though, are a better man.” There was a creaking in her chair, and Michael flinched as her hand fell on his thigh, and gave him a vigorous pinch. “A better husband, yes?”

  Michael flinched — he hadn’t told her about the separation yet, about the necessity of untying himself from the web that was Suzanne, and the things Suzanne had said to him on the doorstep; he hadn’t told anyone in the family in point of fact, because they were part of the web as much as Suzanne was. He patted Grandmother’s hand.

  “Where’s Grandfather now?” he asked.

  Grandmother sighed. “You must know, hmm, dear? No one else has his address?”

  Michael didn’t answer. She knew no one else had his address; how many places, how many other family members he’d checked with, before coming here. It was Uncle Evan who’d finally sent him, told him the only one to talk to about Grandfather was Grandmother.

  Your Grandmother has all the facts, said Evan, as they sat in the sunroom at his lakefront condominium. Gave her the notebook, the film, oh, years ago. She’s the family keeper, you know. She’s the one to talk to.

  “All right,” she finally said. “Turn on the light and help me up — I’ll fetch the address while you wind the film.”

  “If you tell me where it is — ”

  “I’ll get it dear.” Her tone left no room for argument.

  Michael leaned over to the floor lamp, groped up its narrow brass stem and pulled the chain. The room filled with a light yellowed by the dusty lampshade, and that light struck Michael’s Grandmother in profile. It did not flatter her.

  When she was younger, Grandmother was reputed to have been something of a beauty, but from the time Michael could remember she had fattened to an ugly obesity. Some of that weight had fallen off over the past ten years, but it had not improved her. Gravity had left Grandmother a drying fruit, flesh hanging loose over the absent girth. It had also left her with diabetes and high blood pressure, dizzy spells and swelling feet. But for all that, she still wouldn’t let her grandson climb the stairs to the kitchen for her. Michael allowed himself a smile — he obviously wasn’t the only one “of a kind” with Grandfather in this family.