For Marta, also raised in a community of similar size, the rap sheet highlighted appalling efforts. And, aside from fantasies, she’d never struck a soul.
“You gotta believe me, that person is a total stranger. I’m one hundred percent pussycat now.” Chaz continued to disavow that self and whatever truths it revealed. The final words of his defense: “C’mon, last winter I was a Sister of Honour at a lesbian wedding. A Wiccan Joining Ritual, I mean.”
Inside the cab, they had painted themselves into an awkward, silent corner; Marta’s surprise had been interpreted as total condemnation.
Though hungry and frazzled, Marta grasped that the chance to let Chaz off the hook had wafted into the room. With the exception of the bully barbarism, she’d sensed a twinge of her own envy, in any case, not judgment alone: a sensible, well-mannered childhood does not convert into intriguing memoir. “Okay.” She sought alternatives. “Well, how about swimming on the weekend?”
“How about ‘Make hay while the sun shines’?” He slumped, back against the doorframe. “You don’t have to swim, just show me how to get there. How’s that? We’ve pushed shooting forward by a couple of hours tomorrow, so you’ll have time for beauty sleep if that’s your worry. Besides, it’s that or Exxtreme—with two Xs—Labradoodles: Caught on Tape! on TV.”
“Well, you’re practically wagging your tail down there. That’s hard to resist.”
“Excellent, I’ll grab the chips.” Chaz sprang to his feet and saluted a goodbye.
“Ten minutes, okay?” Marta thought of the peasant blouse with the beaded drawstring neck. The gauzy medium weight would be ideal for canal-cooled drafts.
“No problem.”
2.
They walked in silence by the bug-splashed noses of cars toward Marta’s rental, parked next to the Star-Lite’s front desk office. Hours past sunset, all the surfaces—asphalt, concrete, stucco, room doors painted red—radiated with dying campfire heat, but chilled breezes rushing down from valley peaks and through orchards whispered promises of a comfortable sleep.
To reach the canal from her grandmother’s alfalfa fields, Marta had needed to fight through fifteen minutes of reverted farmland, a parcel of gnarled roots, antelope-bush, tall grasses, and woolly rabbit-brush that snagged clothing. She remembered that service roads ran parallel to the channel, and drove toward Joan’s certain that the point of entry would appear, clear as a beacon. Since Chaz hadn’t asked, she guessed he trusted her internal compass.
Unaccustomed to driving at night Marta sighed in gratitude for the deserted highway—and Chaz’s restraint: little animation, no fidgeting with the radio, no comments about the speed limit. The orchards stood mutely, revealing sentry indivisibility when the headlights flashed across their leaves.
Marta followed the tug of memory and turned right when approaching the town’s prominent intersection. Her concern mounted—odds favoured the access road’s accessibility for municipality officials only and gates for anyone else. Spotting a small bridge ahead, she signaled right again.
“Whoa, slow down, sister!” Chaz said.
“You held your tongue the entire way, that was impressive. I do have to slow down for a second, only to get my bearings, but I promise to speed up again.”
As breezes rushed through the cabin, they passed by windowless fruit storehouses, forlorn lots, and scrappy back yard orchards. Chaz pointed out a municipal sign, the destination now plain. A yellow metal gate blocked passage.
“Well, that’s that.” Marta listened to the idling engine. Beams caught metallic flecks in the paint and made the heavy bar glow with unambiguous purpose.
“Just give me a sec, okay?” Chaz reached for the door handle. “And eat some chips before I scarf down the whole f-ing bag. Deep-fried potatoes, that’s the last thing needed by this Buddha belly.”
Marta watched him walking to the gate. Chaz bent before turning to the car with a smile. “It’s not locked.” He strode to her window. “Green means go.”
“And that,” she sighed, “is how criminal acts begin.” A statement of formality only: Marta could see that canal swimming was a foregone conclusion.
He’s already turned for the gate. “An unlocked gate and not a Do Not Enter sign in sight. I think we’d have a legit case.”
“I have to agree.”
Chaz unhitched the gate and re-secured it once Marta passed through, tiptoeing back to the car with cartoon villain sneakiness.
Pebbles spat noisily and Marta noticed the car drifting slightly as the tires followed the road’s gravel curves. She clenched the steering wheel; the surfing motion awakened her nerves. “You know, it’s interesting, this canal system was dug before the Depression, when the government decided to develop this town,” she said. “It planned to create a settlement for World War One veterans. Before that the whole area got by as a minor gold rush hub and a major cattle ranching area. Beef for the Empire.”
“Cool, Professor History. Maybe I’ll read about it when the book comes out.” He reached outside with scooped hands; the air pushed his lax arms along the window frame. “How much further?”
“Bridges were built at even spans all along the way. As far as I can remember, they’re more or less identical. I can pull over any time, so just say when.”
The curve straightened and she drove with relaxed shoulders for five quiet minutes.
“Okay, next one,” Chaz exclaimed.
“I’ll keep the headlights switched on.” Marta slowed as a bridge came into sight.
3.
Willowy vegetation clotted the canal’s banks; if clandestine swimmers had cut pathways, none parted from the road.
“Wow, it’s not the Gold Coast is it? Looks like I’ll have to blaze my own trail,” Chaz said, beginning to slide down his jeans. “No, er, cracks about a full moon, alright?”
“My lips are sealed.” Work had blessed Chaz with a farmer’s tan. His face and forearms blended into the night while the rest did set itself up for lunar jokes.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come in?” Chaz stood wearing striped boxer shorts.
“Between log boom death traps at home and the deadly currents of the canal, my family was phobic about death by submersion.” Expecting a piercing and tattoos, Marta was surprised to discover nothing except an ursine endowment of unclipped chest hair in a thick T. “You’d think we’d had a maritime family tragedy that everyone desperately wanted to never repeat. But, really, the water is too cold for me.”
“Okay, here goes nothing.” Chaz shucked the boxers and quickly turning for the water. He hopped over sharp rocks and a yarn tangle of branches, muttering about pain until disappearing. “Mother of Christ, it’s . . . okay. Actually it’s not that bad!”
A translucent miasma of haze drifted in from distant orchards, and Marta concluded the swampy setting would look better from a distance. She hiked to the centre of the white wooden bridge and peered over the edge to watch the foamy rush of water beneath; bats swooped and fluttered across the wide night sky.
Chaz yelled and gesticulated, but Marta couldn’t decipher a word. She waved, growing uneasy. If he swam too close to the bridge and its narrow corridors of swift current, she’d gesture madly to alert him. The set up seemed classic as a would-be tragic accident: “Yes, officer, it was late at night. Yes, he was swimming alone. Yes, he may have had a beer or two. No, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and by the time I rushed down to the water he was too far from the shore; I couldn’t really see him, so rescuing him was out of the question.” She wondered if being a passive witness counted as criminal negligence.
Watching Chaz from the bridge, Marta envisioned herself standing atop the plank railing, cinematically lit, balanced precariously, wearing a bone-white bra and, matching her bruisable, faintly indolic flesh, panties reminiscent of sodden newsprint. The image could be an indelible outtake from Blue Velvet, an
d she—vulnerable, overwrought, mottled with grotesquerie—a woman about to make a despairing or euphoric leap after a sublime moment of trailer court anagnorisis, perhaps, or to undulate crazily while lip-synching to a dubious torch song from the 1950s.
Marta had read enough to recognize that a leap into the dark void came freighted with implications, soulful and profound. If in a novel, the catharsis of the leap and the immersion into the water would be a complex, essay-worthy set of associations that might reference baptism rituals or the Freudian unconscious; she’d analyze the passage in a classroom expertly. The difference was, jumping off the ledge and sinking into the roaring current tonight wouldn’t announce any breakthrough. Inky water here simply meant dangerous, not symbolic; and if surviving the plunge turned out to be the lucky outcome, the arrival on shore would presage the mood of a wet cat only. The literary moment—doused with a convenient new outlook, now weightless and ready to grab life by the horns after the special audience with Platonic truth—would prove wishful thinking. She’d be cold and uncomfortable, and flustered later while driving on empty roads in damp undergarments clamped to puckered skin. She hadn’t even brought a towel.
Chaz floated otter-like below. He let himself drift for a moment with the current and then kicked frantically to return to territory he’d already claimed.
Marta waved again and walked toward the car. Staring into the murky thicket hollow where Chaz had disappeared, she began to discern a crude pathway. Branches jabbed and the granite bank tricked her feet, but the current’s silvery reflections guided her forward. No sandy shore met her: rock one step, canal the next. Alert for the insidious hum of ravening mosquitoes Marta crouched on a flat boulder, pondering whether to dip a toe into the frigid water.
“How’s the water out there,” Marta yelled over the current.
“Invigorating!” Chaz turned over and began swimming toward the bank. “Actually, it’s cold as a witch’s tit. That was my Dad’s favourite.”
“Colourful. Mine still says, ‘Cold as a well-digger’s ass.’”
“And ‘Don’t know shit from Shinola,’” Chaz said. “Never knew what that meant.”
“My mother preferred ‘chewed dates.’” Marta ran fingertips along the surface of the water. “My father’s comparison was—well, is—always ‘ass’ and ‘a hole in the ground.’”
“Wow, ‘Good grief, Charles’ for my mom. The foulest thing out of her mouth is ‘Cripes!’ And that’s when she’s really ‘browned off’ about something. It’s time-warpy, but kinda cute.”
“My mother grew up in a Prairie household of hockey player brothers.”
“It’s weird that our generation doesn’t have better sayings.” He paddled near the shore. “Saying ‘dude’ all the time doesn’t count.” The current mellowed at the water’s edge and Chaz corrected the drifting with an occasional kick.
“Cold as a stock-trader’s eyes?”
“That’s not bad,” Chaz said. “I was thinking of something to do with terrorists, but it seemed too obvious and Republican. Phew, that’s enough for me. With all the shrinkage, I’m starting to feel peewee league!”
“Your clothes are where you left them on the car hood.” She could feel the water-cooled air passing though the cotton’s light weave. “Do you want me to grab them?”
“Nah, they’ll be warm. I’ll make a run for it.”
Marta guessed they were both conscious of the scene’s picturesque oddity, Chaz the au naturel elephant in the room. Knee-jerk propriety occurred to her as she stood: fig-leaf hands over the groin for the man; and for the woman averted eyes, or, perhaps, nurse-like efficiency, as though a nude body—a mere object to be shaved, wiped, or prodded—existed as part of a routine, as unnoticed a line in the job description as beeping heart rate monitors.
Comic relief slipped out instead. “This way, Sir,” she said, gesturing with the bland helpfulness of a flight attendant.
“Thank you, Miss.” Chaz slipped out of the canal and into the trail with a motion whose fluidity was broken by yelps and grumbling caused by pokes of angular gravel and sharp webs of branches.
Though she’d never stood at this exact location and hadn’t ever conceived of sneaking out to the canal deep into the night, Marta inhaled deeply and, facing the water, surrendered to a contentment cousin to nostalgia. Cascading swirls of moist and warm air, enveloping murmur of current, mobile chiaroscuro along the surface: the bubble of time exceptional and perfect, otherworldly yet as rooted as ivy.
With the headlights illuminating the return climb, Marta avoided the snags along the path.
“Hey, I should have mentioned it earlier, but I looked online. There’s a twenty-four-hour truck stop-style restaurant ten minutes south of the motel,” Chaz said as Marta emerged from the darkness. “It’s either that or the dregs of the BBQ chips.”
“I’m officially starving, so chips won’t cut it.”
“Pedal to the metal?”
“Okay, for you. Just once.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m buying.”
“As you wish, Charles.”
“Ha ha, let’s not go there. Just my mom calls me that.”
“I understand you completely.”
COLOSSUS
1.
Jake’s chest nudged the steering wheel as he scrutinized the poker-faced landscape: one sliver-thin dirt road looked no different from the next, and the solid blocks of orchard between them helped him in no way. He felt elderly slowing to catch sight of the dwarf road signs. At least no other drivers zoomed by and registered—honk, hooonnnkkk—the crawling speed, stops and starts, and brake light frequency. Jake, almost positive he was pointed in the right direction, fretted about the sketchy details; he thought enviously of scouts and trackers in movies—never having met one in real life—who could glance at a patch of dirt and verify who’d been there, what went down, and how long ago. Close to the real McCoy, Nicos would have sniffed out the location in a heartbeat.
Reaching the summit of the low rise, Jake spotted the landmark he’d been told to watch for—a small plywood fruit stand whose roof-top sign trumpeted fertility: a basket-weave cornucopia spilling over with plump ripe produce. Supposedly, the rendezvous location stood just inside the next roadway.
A minute too early, Jake spat gum out the window and popped in two fresh cinnamon pieces, hoping that the courtesy would be reciprocated. He’d walked away from breath-of-the-damned types before; and he’d head for the nearest exit if up close and personal with any body’s rank orifices and funky pits. He riffled through the messenger bag for lube. Spending next to no time on trivial chat and negotiations would be key tonight.
Tractor-wide, the target road stretched out, as nondescript as the rest. Jake braked to a crawl. Since parking on the puny road shoulder was out of the question, process of elimination led him to the orchard itself. If anything went wrong, he’d tell Old MacDonald or Officer Joe that he’d pulled over to take a leak: tired, a long day on the road, etc, etc, no harm, no foul.
Positioned at the edge of the neat tree line, Jake flicked off the headlights and waited. Short minutes later he swung open the door—a furtive stranger inside a dark car could be intimidating, after all, shorthand for danger. Leaning against the grille with crossed arms, he saw shadowy forms and detected no sound except rustling leaves and the guttural croaking of distant toads. A cattle-hauling semi sped by, illuminating the arbour, for that instant a diorama at a natural history museum: “The Age of Agribusiness,” complete with an old-fashioned thresher and piped-in livestock pong. During the headlight flash Jake darted his eyes from one tree trunk to the next. Not a soul. And when darkness returned he was blind for a half minute and anticipated the snap of a twig or a voice—“Hey, man”—from the near distance. Still nothing save for the sound of his breathing. The butt of a joke, he predicted, the sensation unwelcome.
2.
It’s time to take the bull by the horns, Jake thought. “Hey, anyone there?” he asked, voice low but friendly, as when approaching a dog. Jokily: “I can’t see past my nose.”
The breeze cutting through the trees answered enigmatically.
He sighed a gambler’s lament, pissed about wasted time and squashed expectations. Ecstasy’s possible, Jake had been shown time and again, as is being stood up, running into a repulsive case of false advertising, or coming face to face with a thudding lack of chemistry despite everything lining up on paper.
Buttressed and warmed by the vehicle, the idiocy of trying but failing to attain a cool, devil-may-care pose struck him.
Jake’s eureka called for the lowering of jeans; he’d work his tool to optimal hardness and jack with teasing showy gusto. A proud Colossus of Rhodes stance might entice the shy watcher; that manly siren’s call never failed to work in porn. Outside of porn, the spectacle played out differently: a comic set-up with a punch line about Pee-wee Herman and being caught, or worse, a crushing indictment—the mark of a sex offender, a solitary loser, a characterless nobody with an overgrown fantasy life who can’t disguise the fact that the very existence of the bad habit is third-rate, less a proud enlightened choice than a pathetic last resort.
With the tumult of thoughts he kept the jeans buttoned.
Why did the act need to mean anything, Jake wondered. Nobody thought scratching an itch harboured deep implications, or stood for loneliness, laughable social skills, or butt ugliness. Philosophy in the dark, he thought, what’s up with that?
He squinted into the murk of the rustling tree rows, expectations dwindling and spiky anger rising.
Exhaling sharply—annoyed, dissatisfied, insulted—Jake returned to the vehicle and backed up, momentarily pondering the hotel visitor he’d brushed off earlier. “Cursed hellhole,” he said, “no wonder people go to real cities.” He turned right at the highway. Despite the black cloud mood he drove off slowly. Someone might be there, hidden and watching—a coward or a sadist—and he refused to give the game-playing asswipe the satisfaction of catching any sign of his short-lived but intense regret.
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