by Tony Burgess
We used a master copy on Julie’s father’s tape recorder and we put together parts in a different order using a machine that the library loaned us. We spent hours in Julie’s basement rewinding, fast-forwarding, and recording. We had invented completely new speeches right out of the dead woman’s words. We believed that these were the real things she was saying and that she’d chosen us to help her speak from beyond the grave to her husband. In the meantime we kept up our nightly attacks on John with the mysterious choir music. Once he came out with a shotgun and stood there, like the ghost of a soldier, and just stared out into the trees. We sat very still then, but we let the music play, because we didn’t want him to think that whatever it was would be afraid of dying.
The choir music was very serious and beautiful, and it seemed to become the soundtrack to our movie. When he stood there on the porch, just a silhouette, with the orange porchlight glowing behind him and the unearthly voices filling the air around him, we felt like we were directing a powerful scene in a supernatural film. We would later talk about the themes and the lighting of each scene. And how we were building up to the earth-shattering climax.
We went out early one Sunday morning to the cemetery to set up our equipment; the tape recorder was all we really needed. But we had to stake the place out, we couldn’t be in a spot were he’d see us, this was all going to take place in daylight after all. The cemetery wasn’t very big and the land was pretty flat. The only tombstones that weren’t laid horizontal were pretty small, so it looked like we’d have no place to set up out of sight. We strolled around among the stones looking for hers. It lay flat on the ground, with grass bulging over its edges. Then we saw beside it another stone with the same last name. It was a child’s stone. He had died at the age of seven, on the same date as his mother. Julie and I stepped backwards at the same time and looked at each other for signs of second thoughts, but instead we encouraged each other to grin.
“The plot thickens,” she said, and we both laughed at that. But we stopped laughing quickly, because we didn’t want comedy to ruin our mood of genius. We walked silently along the perimeter of the graves and then we noticed a shallow ditch that ran along the north end, one you could only see when you got right up to it. Without speaking we stepped down into it and crouched. No one would see us here, it was perfect. We leaned the little black tape recorder up in its soft leather jacket against the incline so that it faced toward the cemetery, and then we lay on our bellies, face to face in the bottom of the dry ditch. Now we would wait. Julie kept wanting to check the tape to make sure it was cued, that the volume was set right, but we had already gone over that the night before, real carefully. So all we could do was watch the dirt, following the ants in and out of tiny black holes. In the distance we heard a car pull up, its tires snapping and popping the tiny stones that made up the road into the cemetery. Julie poked her head up and down real fast, then covered her mouth; her eyes were wide and she nodded. We lay still and listened. I placed my fingers on the tape buttons, careful not to apply any pressure.
We heard the tone of the car engine whine high and hiss for a second before stopping. We didn’t hear the door open, but we heard it close. It was hard to hear him walking from down in that ditch, all sound seemed to carry over our heads. I thought that’s probably a good thing, it’ll make it hard for him to tell where the voices are coming from. Since we couldn’t hear him and we couldn’t risk another peek, we had to guess when he would reach the grave site.
Time enough. I pushed my finger on the play button and this is what came out:
“John, I’m waiting (pause) and I’m tired of waiting for you (pause). John I’m waiting. I’m waiting. John I’m waiting.” The rest of the tape was distorted versions of these phrases, with “Hurry up John, I don’t have all day” repeated over and over and over.
Julie and I rolled over onto our backs while it played and we stared into the sky. I could make out horses and cowboys and crowns forming and melting as the grey-white clouds bulged and tumbled. The edges of the ditch were like curtains pulled back on this vast heaven of white backs and feathers and towers. It all seemed to fill the dead woman’s voice with the power to split open time. Tear it like paper. Disperse it like clouds. Fences, parachutes and men with giant ears all fumbled to obey her voice, and then fell apart into tanks and pop bottles.
Suddenly the clouds disappeared, and a dark head and shoulders eclipsed the light. Out of the sky came a monstrous arm, and its giant hand stretched out just over my face. Before I could roll out of the way I felt an angry pull at the front of my coat; I looked over for Julie but all I could see were her legs kicking as she was jerked up. I closed my eyes and punched out into the coal, and all of a sudden my feet were buckling and bending along the ground that sped underneath me.
★
I hit Dan on the back of his head. I don’t know why. He looks up at me with his face freckled with dirt. Now, I’m thinking to myself, now, you bastard — we can’t hang in these hedges all day waiting for Mr. and Mrs. 911 to find us. He understands this and slides the hunting knife over to me.
A WRITER IN THE BIG HOUSE
I’m doing a stretch here for something I don’t really want to talk about. In jail. Oh dear. I ask myself, what does disclosure look like? A big, old jail cell. Where do the facts arrive, when they fly up, unbidden, into the light of day? In a big, old jail cell. True story. Except, of course, for the parts I don’t want to talk about. I wonder about those parts. Not just the current ones, but more generally, all the parts that won’t pass scrutiny. I picture them in a field, playing, like children, unaware that their births are accidental, that they deform perfectly normal adult lives. Secrets. Talking. Everybody wants to know what it’s like to do time. Everybody wants to know what it’s like to hold a knife up to someone’s throat. And there’s only so much time to talk about these things, only so much time to do these things. I’m sorry. Correctional institutions have a way of making a federal offence out of the littlest things.
“My name’s Fob — don’t ask — what’s yours?”
Fob actually looks like his name should be Fob. Not that he looks different or anything — long ugly blond hair, long bony legs with a naked upper body that looks like a fat yellow tooth, and long, fat arms that suggest he’s always wanted to kill someone. Fob. Looks like a fob. What is a fob anyway?
“My name’s Tony. What’s up, Fob?”
I find I like using his name and he’s got a look like he knows I’m gonna call him Fob a lot. But Fob your secret’s safe with Fob.
“I think I know who you are.”
Fob’s rolling a cigarette in a single orange fist. Fob has done more time than I have. I think Fob finds the joint as natural a place to be as any, and that all natural places will be fled from. No hurry. I know about this.
“I don’t think so Fob. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life in a town built around a marina.”
“That’d be Bewdley, right?”
A shot of bad feelings tore into me and I hid them. I froze easily, fixing on the idea that Fob had seen this written on some form somewhere. I had written it on a lot of forms lately. I should be impressed though, right?
“Dammit. How the fuck would you have known I came from Bewdley? How the fuck would you have ever heard of goddamn Bewdley, Fob?”
“I told you, Tony. I know you.”
Oh yeah, that was why I was afraid. He had said that, hadn’t he? Bullshit. Bullshit. Whatever.
“Well, Fob, I do not know you, so why don’t you just quit tryin’ to bug me out here, and tell me how we became so close so far away. Are you my long lost brother, Fob? Is that what you’re tryin’ to say?”
Fob did not seem to think I was even trying to be funny, more like I was just wrong about that. Fob dropped his head a bit and hid it behind the yellow hair.
“The last time I was busted, I was up on the Bruce, working on a farm. I was co
ming out of the barn after smoking a joint, and I suddenly saw — in my mind,” he showed me where that was by stabbing into his hair, “two cops walking on the other side of the hill, towards the house, but from where I stood I couldn’t have seen them with these.” He pulled up his hair to indicate eyes, that, I swear, were yellow too. “And I knew their names. Do you know what I’m getting at now, Tony?”
Well, I sprawled back on my bed, as if I needed some space to consider this question. Alright, Fob, you’re a fuckin’ lunatic who believes he has supernatural powers. Shit.
“Tell you the truth Fob, I think you’re telling me that you’re psychic. I think that’s amazing. I once knew a guy who could …”
“That’s how I know you’re from Bewdley. That you’re doin’ a ninety-day bit. That you’re looking for an education. Grade thirteen, right now, right? Temporary absence?”
I can’t fix this. Oh shit, is he doing some real seeing thing? Is this a paranormal chat? So what, right? Weird and more weird is something I have grown to expect in my life. Except. Except, is Fob gonna figure out that which I won’t even tell you? You remember. It’s not really that bad, I just get along better without this detail. So I find myself knocking my thinking willfully out of whack with Fob — baseball, cats, my mother.
“So what are you in here for, Tony?”
“Robbery.”
He accepts this. It is the truth, more or less. He gives me a startled look. He can hear me scrambling my brains. He knows I’m intentionally doing this and I think it really makes him suspicious. What am I hiding? Am I a child molester? Am I a rat? What’s driving me to suffocate some detail. He sniffs and pulls up his hair, then abruptly walks off.
Oh fuck, Fob. Come back here Fob. I put the detail back. It’s not that bad. I just can’t explain it, that’s all. Come back Fob! I put the detail back.
★
I’d read a lot in here, not only from the wagon, but also from institutional processing forms, like the TAP — Temporary Absence Program — that were left around. I wrote a lot too, not stuff like this, more harrowing and stream of consciousness. The best stuff I will ever write, I think. I soon got a reputation as someone who knew things about the system, and would answer anyone’s questions, without a ‘bug’ personality, provided I could speak from my bunk. A smooth, reclined voice, with my hands folded behind my head and the screws a million years away. Every once in a while somebody would walk over, spread his elbows against the bunk above me, push one knee against my mattress and curl his foot around his calf, while he bent his head down into my space to ask a question: “How do I get to see the TAP officer?” or “Am I gonna get a bus ticket to get to work tomorrow?” I’d always lay my book on my chest before answering, and I’d always give the right answer, then I’d ignore their thank you, or I’d say, “Just do it like that and don’t fuck up, cause once they take it away, it’s gone.” Then I put the book between us as evidence of something not gone, as insurance that my tobacco would always be there and as proof that I had never, would never fuck with sanity. Every half hour, or so, I would privately shrink my screaming into broken phrases that I could just fit behind my throat. Truth is, I was always bugging.
I always went to piss at night, after the last ‘jug,’ after lights out, so that no one saw my stiff, confident walk. One night while I sat on one of the twelve toilets that stood side by side in the brightly lit head, I had a visitor. Fob sat on the toilet beside me for about a minute and then turned and looked straight at me. I smirked at him, looking for that eye contact, that fake tired — we are too tired — we are not ‘bugging’ look. But he didn’t look at me that way, no; he looked too strong, no laziness, no slouch on the toilet. A puffed, climactic gel illuminated his face instead: he was bugging. And he talked to me.
“I killed everybody,” he said, newly lazy, setting me at ease.
“Just don’t let it happen again,” I said, without punch, without voice. He was bugging, but I was going back to bed, so fuck his breakdown. I think alone now, you deluded mindfucker.
“I didn’t think I could do it. There’s twelve guys in there. I figured I could snooze them out with some Largactil in the jug, then, easy push-push-push with this.” He held out a screwdriver, and I almost believed him, until I noticed it was spotless.
“Yeah, well, I hope you said good night to them,” I said, scared of this guy all over again, except I had seen this sort of bug before; a coward, like me, after jug, sitting in the head pretending you’re someone else.
Thing was bugs like this guy often really think they do the shit they talk about: this guy, maybe schizophrenic, maybe just inside out, might even believe he’s killing inmates. Now I’ve got to figure how to play him, cause he sure as hell is playing me. This guy might even suspect I’m bugged, and followed me into the head to try me out. When he started jerking off (I hate when they do that) I wiped myself and got ready to leave. As I was leaving I tried to stare at my feet, when he whispered to me: “Here comes the fatherhood.” I automatically looked near him, not directly at him — a defensive move — not to confront him, just to locate him. He was leaning over and sliding his hand across the toilet seat I had just left. It looked like fresh blood, but then again I wasn’t looking right at it, it could have been shit. I wasn’t about to jeopardize my safe, lazy face again, by any direct response. That response started with a gag in my throat, but by the time I reached my bunk it had worked itself out into a smile in the dark. I fell asleep before he left the head.
In the morning I forgot all about it thanks to the guy who was vigorously jerking off in the upper bunk, turning the whole apparatus into an epileptic alarm clock. When he stopped there was an approving chorus of farts and coughs. I just lay silent, feeling my mattress absorb his last convulsions as the lights came on, way up high among the orange, iron rafters. Littered about in the emergency lighting were snoring men under heavy bedding — having nightmares about being late for work. Most of them wake up laughing. I had a copy of a Margaret Atwood novel — I forget the title — under my pillow, which I pulled out and slid behind my bale of Daily Mail. When I later got TAP to finish grade thirteen, I took to stealing books from the book wagon. I loved those books, with ‘Property of the Mimico Detention Centre’ stamped on the inside cover: Papillon, Bad Ronald, Alice in Wonderland, Alien, Dubliners. Christ more even. Lost now. What I’d give to have them back.
After morning jug, I sat back in my bed, safe in the coarse, grey blanket. (You make your bed first thing, then, in my case, you get right back into it — never do less than they ask, but always flaunt how stupid you are.) Suddenly, standing at the end of my bed is Fob. He holds one hand over his face, as if the sun is glaring in his eyes and in the other hand he’s holding something solid and black, about the size of a shit, but it’s not, or I’d smell it.
“You read a lot,” he says, the hand still sheltering his eyes. “Yeah, well I hate cards.”
Everybody plays cards, and I actually like to play, but as you know, in here I bug when I’m in groups.
“I know why you read.” He slides the object into his pocket, still peering out between his fingers.
This guy stands out like Satan in a donut shop, and every pair of eyes in the dorm is fixed on our little scene, watching to see if I know how to throw out the trash. Up to this point I’ve maintained a stable, albeit bedridden, respectability; but now I’ve got to speak in the house — and if it’s bug to bug, we both lose our razors, tobacco, blankets and relative safety to the popular sanity of manslaughterers, wife-beaters and drunk drivers, who decode these spectacles for the public good. Thing is, I’m starting to really feel sorry for this guy, who has now, God help me, sat at the end of my bed. I can tell by the look in his eyes, which hide behind his worried fingers, that he’s just terrified. Not terrified of the place, or the people, or the screws, or the time: he’s just scared that for the first time in his life, he’s going to lose his mind. And he
knows that it might be for good. I don’t know why but it suddenly occurs to me that he probably can’t read.
“Would you read to me?” His fingers, caging his face are trembling now, and I think to myself, “Oh, shit, he’s gonna cry.”
Almost everyone is staring, smirking, now — liking me, because I don’t look up from my book to respond. I just keep reading.
“Read the book.”
His voice has risen, a fear coming into it — soon we’ll all hear his insanity.
I kick him hard against the hip, from under my blanket and he reaches out into space with his hand.
I don’t look up from my book and I don’t know what happens next, but the whole dorm is laughing inside my ears, drowning his voice as he calls out to me from somewhere on the floor.
THE GREAT BELLY OF ROGER’S MOTHER
Two men, who had spent most of their adult lives living on the streets in small-town lockups, detox or men’s hostels, suddenly found themselves set up in a two-bedroom apartment, with wall-to-wall shag, a balcony, a swimming pool. One of them would eventually attempt to kill himself, even as he climbed out of the life he had already left. They would always wish, however, that they had more money. But that didn’t really matter, at least one of them would have suicided anyway, perhaps successfully. When they had money it was as if they had never been without, they’d talk volubly about poverty, raising their eyebrows and shaking the newspaper back into readable shape, saying, “Well, it’s a problem.” And when they were broke and living on the street it was as if they had never known anything else.
On the thick ivory-coloured shag carpet sat Roger with his legs folded Indian-style while he lifted, with both hands, a large green bottle full of purplish port to his already stained lips. He looked sexy with his ripe purple mouth. Roger was a Native Canadian, so the way he sat seemed to us, his hosts, as comfortable as it was appropriate. He reminded me of a Boy Scout. As a Boy Scout I drank cheap booze too, though I usually leaned on an elbow to do so. As I watched him disinterestedly emptying the bottle’s contents, it dawned on me how little we had in common. I was drinking myself to death and he drank to inspire people to laugh with him. That motive seemed to me at least one remove from bad drinking. That’s why I was always certain that he knew what he was doing, after doubling over happy, knowing how to recover himself moment to moment, and how to pull me up before carpet burns. He never fell into those blurry, repetitious speech habits that drinkers crush conversation with, like I often would, and he always played me like I was real smart, as if my long half-sentences simply went over his head. He rarely spoke of it, but some of his friends had died drunk before his eyes.